GetScandium

AZ, a 30-year-old serial entrepreneur with a previous exit under his belt, faced a familiar problem: he was running multiple desktop products and needed to maintain them. Traditional QA approaches—hiring humans or writing test scripts in Selenium and Cypress—proved unsustainable and cumbersome. The real pain point wasn't just automation; it was collaboration. "Writing scripts using Selenium and with Cypress, they are tedious and not so friendly when you need to collaborate," AZ explained. This friction inspired him to build a no-code test automation tool that could be used across the entire product value chain without requiring engineers to write code.

AZ and his co-founder—a relationship dating back to 2012 and a previous startup sale in 2019—decided to bootstrap the venture with $100K total ($45K deployed so far by AZ). The pair negotiated a 51-49 equity split, a conversation that worked smoothly given their history and deep understanding of each other. They built a lean 12-person team: 7 engineers and 5 business staff. In January 2024, the business officially started; by April, the first version of GetScandium launched. The initial product was web-focused, with mobile testing and APIs in active development.

Instead of cold outreach or paid acquisition, AZ leveraged his founder network and the PremierBN community—an Africa-focused founder collective with 35+ WhatsApp groups. GetScandium launched directly into the community's "idea launch" group, where founders share new projects and recruit early users. The community itself is invite-only and costs $250/year, but it proved invaluable: all 30 paying customers came from this single WhatsApp group. AZ credits the success to two factors: his existing relationships with startup founders, and the acute pain point—QA is "a big challenge" in Africa because "not so many software engineers can actually write scripts."

The adoption curve was steep: within 7 months of launch, AZ had 80-100 total users and converted 30 into paying customers at an average of $200/month—totaling $5K-$6K MRR. The traction came almost entirely from word-of-mouth seeding in the community, combined with targeted consultative sales. After a user signed up, AZ's business team would reach out, conduct a demo, and guide them toward paying plans. What hasn't fully materialized yet is global expansion—GetScandium is still primarily an Africa-focused product. AZ plans to broaden reach by entering a global accelerator and launching more comprehensive features (mobile, APIs, desktop support) before scaling marketing efforts.

Seven months post-launch, GetScandium is at $60K ARR, fully bootstrapped, with a 12-person team funded entirely from revenue and AZ's buffer capital. AZ retains 51% equity and plans to stay independent for at least another 6 months, avoiding venture capital to preserve founder ownership—a lesson learned from selling equity too quickly in his first exit. The next phase involves completing the product roadmap (APIs, mobile, desktop), then pursuing global accelerator partnerships to expand beyond Africa and scale to 100+ paying customers.