Lidiro
Ian Cullen had already built and sold two B2B lead generation businesses. His first, Target 250, was founded in 2001 and grew to 130 staff before he sold it in 2010. His second, Internal Results, was a similar business that he built to about 60 people and sold to Madison Logic in May 2016. With that background in software sales and demand generation, he launched Lidiro, a data-as-a-service platform focused on account-based marketing.
Lidiro lets customers search around 30 million B2B executives. Ian described the workflow: a user uploads a list of domains, and within seconds the platform returns the people working at those companies. Users can then filter by job title, level, and function, and exclude existing contacts so they only receive net-new names. Customers were mostly software vendors and publishers who used the audiences for outbound programs. The company was self-funded, and the team was six people, three full-time and three part-time, spread across the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand.
Lidiro did little marketing. Ian said the company relied on outbound outreach to people from the founders' past software sales and lead generation work who had since moved to new companies. Plans were sold on monthly, quarterly, or annual billing, with annual plans starting around $20,000. Ian estimated customer acquisition cost at roughly 20% of the annual plan value.
The company had early cancellations, which Ian attributed to the early stage of the business. The host raised the risk of customers who download data and leave, and suggested a one-time fee might suit some buyers better than a subscription. Ian also acknowledged that many competitors look similar, and said the winners would be the better marketers.
At about four months old, Lidiro had just under 20 customers and roughly $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. The host calculated an average of about $2,500 per customer per month. Ian said the next product step was to let users filter by specific software products used by target companies.
- •Founders with two prior exits in the same lead generation space could sell to contacts they already knew, which made outbound outreach work without a marketing budget.
- •Targeting a narrow set of enterprise buyers (software vendors and publishers) produced large annual contracts, so a small customer base could reach about $50,000 in MRR.
- •Self-funding kept the team small and avoided investor pressure to chase growth before the product was proven.
- 1.Start by listing former colleagues and buyers from your previous sales or lead generation work who have moved to new companies.
- 2.Reach out to them directly by call or email to ask how they plan to launch products and whether they need data beyond their own customer lists.
- 3.Offer annual plans with a clear volume-based price, starting around $20,000, to target enterprise buyers who can afford them.
- 4.Track customer acquisition cost against plan value, aiming for something like 20% of annual contract value, and watch early cancellations for signs of one-time data buyers.
Similar Companies
247.ai
$25.0M/mo247.ai, founded by PV Cannon in 2000, is an AI-powered customer service automation platform serving over 150 enterprise customers with $300M+ in ARR. The company raised only $20M from Sequoia (2003) and bootstrap, achieving 10% net profit margins while maintaining a 12-month CAC payback period and 100% net revenue retention. Despite a security breach setback around 2018, 247.ai has recovered and recently achieved 20% new revenue booking growth in their best quarter.
iCIMS
$13.3M/moiCIMS is a bootstrapped SaaS provider founded in 1999 that dominates the talent acquisition software market as the #2 player, serving 3,500 enterprise customers with an average monthly spend of $4,000. The company exited 2017 with $160M ARR and is targeting 25%+ annual growth while maintaining profitability, recently acquiring Text Recruit to expand into candidate messaging and recruitment advertising.
Zoom
$12.0M/moZoom is a freemium SaaS video conferencing platform founded by Eric Yuan in July 2011 after he left Cisco to build a next-generation collaboration solution. The company has grown to 850,000+ paying customers across individual, SMB, and enterprise segments, generating over $12M in monthly recurring revenue with approximately 100% year-over-year growth. Rather than focusing on customer stickiness or aggressive growth targets, Zoom emphasizes customer happiness and organic word-of-mouth acquisition, which has proven highly effective in driving viral adoption.
Madwire
$10.0M/moMadwire is a comprehensive SaaS platform for small businesses (1-100 employees) that combines CRM, payments, invoicing, billing, e-commerce, and multi-channel marketing tools in a single platform. Founded in 2009, the company has grown to $120M ARR serving 20,000 customers with an average revenue per user of $500/month, while maintaining strong unit economics ($3,000-$4,000 CAC with 3-month payback) and recently turning profitable with a focus on reaching 15-20% EBITDA margins. The company is exploring an IPO within 12-18 months without having raised substantial capital beyond an initial $7.5M.
SwiftPage
$7.0M/moSwiftPage is a CRM and marketing automation platform founded in 2001 that targets small businesses. Under CEO John Oshel's leadership since 2012, the company scaled from 60,000 customers with $26.2M revenue in 2015 to 84,000 customers today with an estimated ARR of $36M+, maintaining 1.5% monthly logo churn and a 6-7 month payback period with a sub-$500 CAC.