Just Uno

Eric Christensen's path to founding Just Uno was unconventional. After graduating college, he spent four years traveling to over 50 countries, funded initially by freelance web design work. In the mid-2000s, he joined Sierra Snowboard—not as a traditional founder, but as someone who could build the online presence. What started as a personal website evolved into a powerhouse: within the first year, Sierra Snowboard did $1M in sales; by the end, it was doing $24M+ annually with 3,500 packages shipped in a single day. During his time there, Eric noticed something critical: customers searching for "Sierra Snowboard coupon codes" had conversion rates of 8-11%, far exceeding the site-wide average of 1.28%. This insight would become the seed for Just Uno.

In 2010, the same year Sierra Snowboard sold, Eric broke his neck and back in a snowboarding accident. While recovering, he and co-founder Travis brainstormed a solution to a problem they knew intimately: e-commerce businesses didn't want to give out coupons, and changing them on a website required developer involvement. They built a simple widget—a popup that allowed marketers to manage coupons, email captures, and social gates without touching code. Travis built the entire thing in about a month using AWS and custom JavaScript, working alongside other business experiments.

Just Uno launched in November/December 2010 as a pure freemium product. It was a modest tab on the side of a website that displayed current coupons. When they talked to retailers, the initial response was lukewarm: "Why would I give people coupons?" But Eric and Travis understood the real value—capturing emails and reinforcing marketing messages at the exact moment of purchase intent.

They iterated quickly, adding Facebook likes and tweet requirements to gate the coupons. The product was simple, but the market education was the real challenge. For years, they continued running multiple companies simultaneously, hedging their bets until they finally understood which one would scale.

The breakthrough came when BigCommerce added Just Uno to their app store. Eric landed the partnership incredibly fast—the same day they built the relationship, they went live and got 10 signups immediately. This validated a core insight: the app store channel was where their customers lived. Eric became obsessed with getting into every app store possible. He flew to trade shows solo, staying with friends to avoid hotel costs, buying cheap expo passes, and spending entire days building relationships with app store partners. He didn't care which app stores initially—the "shotgun approach" was about maximizing surface area.

This strategy worked. Within two years, they had customers across dozens of platforms. By 2013, Eric called their best performing customers and asked a pivotal question: "We're coming out of beta. Have we earned your business?" The response was resounding yes—customers would pay.

What worked spectacularly: **app store partnerships** (~60% of revenue), **SEO and content marketing** (~20%), and **organic/word-of-mouth** (~20%). Eric applied lessons from Sierra Snowboard: live below your means, focus obsessively on cost to acquire a customer, and invest in long-term relationships over transactional deals. He hired Grant Thomas in 2014 to lead content and marketing, and they built out a strong SEO presence—ranking #1 for "email popups" and top rankings for related terms.

What didn't work: **paid advertising**. Whether it was video campaigns, affiliate programs, or AdWords, paid channels consistently failed to convert. Eric took one video campaign deal for $5,000 and got worthless leads. He learned the hard way that when a vendor has no skin in the game (no conversion-based payment), their incentives don't align with yours.

The company bootstrapped for four years without taking a salary. Eric lived off savings accumulated from Sierra Snowboard, reinvesting every dollar earned back into the business. This meant moving slowly and deliberately—no fancy office, no huge marketing budgets, just resourcefulness and disciplined unit economics.

By September 2015, the model had worked so well that it nearly killed them. They had doubled every year, but growth investments and payroll stretched them to the breaking point. Eric's personal accounts were drained, credit lines maxed, and he had $20,000 in credit card debt. He was getting married on Saturday and facing bankruptcy on Monday. A weekend away, he signed a deal with Lighter Capital—a debt financing option between banks and VCs—on Monday, received funds Wednesday, and made payroll Friday.

Today, Just Uno is debt-free and profitable, generating over $2M in ARR from 55,000+ websites that have used the platform. Their pricing model evolved into a clean freemium tier (free up to 5,000 monthly visitors) with paid plans scaling from $19 to $699/month plus premium customer success. All customers get the same feature set—the difference is just traffic volume, which creates a level playing field for startups and enterprises alike.

Eric's strategy shifted in 2017 from the shotgun approach to a focused partnership model: only tier-one partnerships (based on engagement, shared customers, and long-term opportunity) get significant investment from Just Uno. This 90-10 focus (where 90% of revenue comes from their top 10% of partnerships) mirrors the discipline that got them here.

With a goal of $10M ARR and a proven model that doubles every year, Eric continues to focus on what matters most: the till. No funding dilution, no hype—just a sustainable, profitable SaaS business built on customer success and disciplined growth.