Karma Bot

Stas Kulesh and his co-founder David were running a 25-person web development agency out of New Zealand when they encountered a problem that would lead to their biggest success. Managing a distributed team proved challenging—despite being coworkers, remote workers often felt disconnected. They needed a way to foster team connection, visibility into who was doing what, and genuine appreciation. The spark came from a simple idea: what if they built a tool that let teammates send points to each other as recognition? It was initially just a one-on-one peer recognition system, but it solved a real need for their own team.

What made Karma Bot's origin unique was that it emerged from Stas and David's agency, where they had resources most founders don't: a team of 25 programmers. While the agency handled client work, during slower periods they'd build internal projects. Karma Bot started as one of dozens of experiments—the duo launched "50 something products" on Product Hunt over the years, with only "one or two" becoming sustainable. But Karma was different. They weren't building it for external customers; they were building it for themselves. The tool evolved from a simple point-sending mechanism into a sophisticated reward system with bonuses, multi-level permissions, and animations—features designed to appeal to larger enterprises, not just small teams.

Transitioning from internal tool to commercial product wasn't straightforward. Early on, Karma Bot was barely profitable. Stas recalls the doubt: "$200 a month—how can we talk about $20,000? It will never happen." His co-founder David was skeptical of the exponential growth charts. But Stas was convinced by the pattern they were seeing: organic word-of-mouth growth bringing 1% monthly compounding gains from people talking about the product.

The turning point came when they joined Y Combinator School, which provided real feedback from someone with YC experience. Combined with consistent blogging on Indie Hackers—eventually publishing 240+ posts with weekly updates—they built momentum. By March 2018-2019, they'd closed their first enterprise deals. One deal alone promised $10,000 ARR, a validation that larger companies saw value in the product.

The biggest breakthrough was realizing Karma Bot needed to target enterprises, not individual teams. Enterprise deals ($5,000–$10,000+ per year) far outpaced individual customer revenue ($30–$200 per month). However, Stas learned you can't start with enterprise sales without first understanding the problems. Small teams taught them what customers needed; enterprise sales required knowing how to work with "champions"—advocates within the company who would sustain adoption over years, not months.

Selling proved to be the hardest part. Stas and David spent approximately 800 hours on sales activities—demos, conversations, pricing discussions. Unlike consumer products, business deals are complex: companies care about implementation, adoption, measurement, and outcomes, not just price or clever code. Stas admits he's less interested in closing deals; David found fulfillment in the "chiching moment" of money hitting the account. This division of labor accelerated growth.

By the time of this interview, Karma Bot had reached $40,000 in monthly recurring revenue (including Stripe charges plus direct payments like checks). The product had expanded to support teams of 16,000+ people, though managing such large deployments proved complex. Stas had relocated from New Zealand to Poland to pursue personal growth and explore new cultures, but continued building Karma as a sustainable, profitable business rather than chasing explosive growth. He remains philosophically committed to the long game: building a company that pays employees' salaries, survives economic cycles, and serves a specific niche—remote teams that embrace recognition culture—rather than trying to be everything to everyone.