Cart Hook

Ben Fisher had previously built Lean Startup Machine, a weekend event series that generated around $10,000 per weekend in ticket sales, and Alchemy Labs, a B2B collaboration software that reached about $5,000 MRR before being acquired. After the Alchemy acquisition, Ben spent about a year carefully considering what to work on next and who he wanted to partner with.

Meanwhile, Jordan Gull had just sold an e-commerce store and was evaluating which type of business to build next. He looked at all the tools he'd been paying for and noticed that the abandoned cart recovery app he was using—despite being a revenue-generating tool—was poorly designed. Jordan realized he could build a significantly better solution.

Jordan hustled and built an initial MVP, acquiring paying customers before bringing Ben on board. When Ben joined, Jordan already had a couple of customers paying $500 per month and others paying as little as $30 per month. The product solved a real problem: 70% of people who added items to their shopping cart abandoned their purchase, representing massive lost revenue for e-commerce businesses.

Jordan's first customers came directly from his own experience running an e-commerce store and recognizing the pain point. Cart Hook targeted e-commerce retailers spending significant money on user acquisition but losing most of them at checkout through abandoned carts. The software would email customers who had begun checkout to entice them back and complete their purchase.

The initial pricing model evolved as the business grew. Ben and Jordan initially charged based on a percentage of recovered revenue, which initially seemed logical. However, this model proved difficult for larger enterprise customers who needed predictable, fixed costs to meet their quotas. The team transitioned to tiered monthly pricing plans instead. By December 2015, they had around 100 paying customers with an average revenue per user target of $120 per month, putting them on track for approximately $12,000 MRR. The founders deliberately raised only $300,000 in friends and family funding—enough to operate well without overextending themselves—rather than pursuing aggressive venture capital that would have pressured them toward unprofitable growth.

As of December 2015, Cart Hook was making money and approaching profitability with around 100 paying customers and approximately $12,000 in monthly recurring revenue. The team had tested various approaches and was focused on reaching profitability—described as "the Holy Land" for the business at that stage. Depending on which market segment they ultimately focused on, they were open to raising additional capital specifically to fuel growth, but weren't pursuing it aggressively.