Folderly

Michael Maximoff started the Balkans agency in 2017, building it into the #1 rated appointment-setting agency according to Clutch and other platforms. By 2017-2023, the agency had grown to serve hundreds of customers across 50+ industries. But success created a new problem: when running cold email campaigns for clients, emails kept landing in spam. The agency needed a solution to their own pain point, and they couldn't find an existing platform that worked.

Rather than immediately building a SaaS product, Maximoff took a smarter approach. He first sold the solution as a high-touch service to his existing agency clients. The team offered a $2,000 email audit (internally costed at ~$500) to diagnose and fix spam issues. On their first customer, they identified 8 problematic mailboxes and made $10,000 from fixing them. This validated that customers would pay for the solution. The early service revenue ($1,000-$15,000 per engagement) funded a dedicated engineering team without tapping the agency's main profit pool.

After about a year of development, Folderly launched as a standalone SaaS product priced at $200 per seat ($2,500/month for a team of 5-10 salespeople). The premium pricing was intentional: it was pegged to the service pricing, so clients upgrading from $1,000-$15,000 monthly service deals found the software upsell easy to justify. High margins (compared to low-margin competitors) meant the company could afford to invest in quality and engineering without constant cash flow pressure.

Folderly didn't start from zero. The Balkans agency had ~5,000-6,000 lost deals in its pipeline—prospects who said no to the service but might buy a $200/seat software product. The company leveraged this owned audience for zero-budget initial user acquisition. Maximoff's team also bundled Folderly with service contracts as a complementary tool, and built a portfolio of video testimonials and case studies from hundreds of agency customers.

The broader strategy treated Folderly as one product in an ecosystem (alongside Leadsforce and others) all serving the same ideal customer profile: sales and marketing leaders at small/mid-market and enterprise companies. Every product had its own sales team but shared the same pool of lost deals, content team, and back-office infrastructure, dramatically reducing CAC for new launches.

Three tactics proved critical:

1. **Service-first validation**: Selling the solution as a service before building the product eliminated product-market fit risk. They knew customers would pay, how much, and what problem they were solving.

2. **High-margin, premium pricing**: By pricing at the service level rather than competing on commodity SaaS pricing, Folderly attracted higher-quality customers, kept margins healthy, and signaled quality. It also meant the engineering team could be fully funded without diluting founder equity or taking debt.

3. **Performance-based culture**: Instead of giving equity to employees, Maximoff structured the company around revenue sharing and performance bonuses tied to company profitability. Everyone—from developers to account managers to marketers—had skin in the game. Departments thought twice before spending, and new product launches had built-in advocates because successful products benefited the entire organization.

4. **Cold email expertise as a moat**: By collecting data from 10+ million emails sent on behalf of thousands of customers over four years, Folderly built industry benchmarks and a knowledge product (published research on open rates, bounce rates, etc.). This helped with brand positioning, customer education, and organic marketing.

Folderly operates as a spin-off of Balkans, not as a separate company. The agency is the parent company and primary funder; Folderly has its own team and KPIs but shares back-office infrastructure. The two companies feed each other: the agency's unique selling point is its proprietary Folderly technology, which creates product leads; Folderly's customers become targets for the agency's appointment-setting services. Maximoff emphasized that bootstrapping without raising capital forced disciplined, profitable unit economics from day one. The company prioritized cash flow, efficient spend, and continuous learning from customers. By year one, Folderly was generating meaningful revenue and proved the model that SaaS could be spun from service delivery if you validate the problem first and structure the team and incentives to align everyone toward success.