Due

Murray Newlands is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company at 23. After running multiple ventures over nearly two decades, he noticed a consistent pain point: getting paid was harder than doing great work. Freelancers and small business owners would land clients, deliver excellent work, but then struggle with the administrative burden of tracking time, creating invoices, and chasing payments. Most defaulted to Word documents and manual tracking systems that quickly became chaotic as they scaled. Murray saw an opportunity to build something simple and purpose-built for this exact problem.

Murray co-founded Due with John, focusing on creating a straightforward online invoicing and time-tracking platform. The team grew to five people—the two founders, an assistant named Angela, two developers, and two designers. They launched with four pricing tiers: Starter, Plus, Ultimate, and Business plans ranging from $100 to $1,000 per year. Rather than chase customers through traditional sales, Murray leveraged his background as a writer and his relationships in the media and startup spaces. The team produced significant content assets, including a 7,000-word guide on being a freelancer, daily blog posts, and long-form educational content. They recruited expert writers from across the industry and paid them per post rather than salary, building a content engine designed to educate and attract their target audience.

Three months in, Due had achieved remarkable traction: 75,000 registered users and over 500 paying customers. This was entirely organic and self-funded—no outside capital, no paid acquisition. The content strategy worked exceptionally well. The 7,000-word freelancer guide was picked up by major publications including Entrepreneur, Time, and TechCrunch, giving the product credibility and reach. Murray also positioned himself as a business advisor and regular contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur, which helped establish both personal and product credibility. Most early customers were signing up for the basic $100/year Starter plan, but the team observed that users would upgrade as they grew and used the product more.

Content marketing was the clear winner. By creating genuinely useful, long-form content and building relationships with journalists and publications, Due gained massive visibility without spending on ads. Retention was strong—over 90% month-to-month—indicating product-market fit in early form. However, Murray acknowledged they weren't yet collecting detailed lifetime value metrics or analyzing which partnership cohorts had the highest value. The biggest challenge was that Due wasn't yet "launched" in their eyes. At three months, they still encountered occasional bugs and wanted more differentiating features before making a major market push. The team was conscious that to truly compete with established players like FreshBooks, they needed to add surprise features and refinements that would justify the market noise.

Due is in self-funded startup mode with a small but focused team. They're generating revenue from over 500 paying customers but are deliberately holding back on a splashy launch until the product matures further. Murray's strategy involves building deeper partnerships—like integration with QuickBooks and future invoice financing capabilities—that extend Due's value beyond invoicing alone. The business model is working: they're retaining customers at over 90%, they're growing user base organically, and they're building a brand through content and thought leadership. As Murray reflected in the interview, the key to long-term success was finding great business partners and building the right team—advice he'd give his younger self.