Boost Insider

Heidi Yu, a fashionable nerd and serial entrepreneur with an MBA from Seattle University, founded Boost Insider in late 2014 as the influencer marketing industry was exploding. She recognized that brands needed better tools to identify the right influencers, understand their audiences, and measure campaign performance—but rather than jumping straight into building SaaS, she took a deliberate path that most founders overlook.

Instead of raising millions and building a SaaS product in a vacuum, Heidi started by running an agency. She processed massive amounts of social media data—photos, text, videos—using deep learning and big data algorithms to identify influencer demographics and match them with brand needs. This wasn't theoretical: she was solving the problem for real clients like Alibaba and Tencent. By the time she decided to productize, she had lived the pain herself. As she told Nathan Latka: "If we don't have our own agency, we don't know the pain. So we have to suffer in all that to make the sense really perfect for our own agency to use."

By December 2017, Boost Insider had grown to over 20 team members split between Silicon Valley and China, and had raised $3 million in funding. The SaaS product—Social Book and Social Hours—was freshly launched, with customers finding them primarily through conferences and events where Heidi spoke and demonstrated the platform. She didn't spend heavily on ads; instead, she leveraged her reputation and energy to get in front of marketing and advertising professionals.

The company operated three distinct revenue streams: the SaaS model (~$50k MRR, less than 10% of total revenue), an advertising/pay-per-click platform (taking 10-30% of spend), and the agency business. When asked about focus, Heidi defended her "unfocused" approach by referencing Airbnb's early chip sales—you do what pays the bills while building the real product. However, she was still experimenting with pricing, having started at $5 per 10 profiles, jumped to $3,000/month, and settled on a "sweet spot" around $500/month for the most popular plan. Some customers paid as little as $5; others on enterprise plans paid substantially more. She admitted not yet tracking churn or customer acquisition cost, which were obvious gaps as the SaaS business scaled.

Heidi set an ambitious goal: $10 million annual run rate for the SaaS product by December 2018, starting from $50k monthly in December 2017. The platform had impressive data—350,000+ influencers covering 20 billion fans globally—and was generating 50-100 daily registrations organically, with potential for explosive growth. Her advice to her younger self reflected hard-won wisdom: "If you don't need investment don't raise it too early." She had raised $3 million and acknowledged the pressure that comes with investors and boards, but remained committed to building a multi-product company where the agency work informed and validated the SaaS roadmap.