Propeller CRM

Eric Bauch had spent years in product and leadership roles before building software. He was Group Product Manager at Dell EMC, co-founded and ran ZigZag Software, sold it to Samsung, and then started Propeller CRM. His goal was a CRM that salespeople would actually want to use, not just a prettier version of data entry. As he put it, the vision was to create tools for email, phone calls, meetings, presentations, and research, with tracking happening as a natural byproduct of the work.

Eric knew the market was crowded. Many people told him he was crazy to enter it. His bet was that a clear niche and a differentiated value proposition could still win. He pointed to deep Gmail integration combined with multi-step email campaigns and strong reporting as the core of that differentiation. He also argued that many buyers were patching together Salesforce, Outreach, PersistIQ, and other tools, which got expensive, and that an all-in-one product for a specific workflow appealed to small companies.

Propeller was built as a SaaS product with per-user monthly pricing, offered in both monthly and annual plans. Eric focused on the low end of the market first, with plans to move up over time. The team was small, about five people including part-timers, spread across San Francisco, Europe, and Los Angeles. Eric said the company had taken some revenue from early customers while the product was still being built, before its official launch.

The product launched widely on September 1, 2016. Eric described the company's website as recently redone in Webflow, which he said took them from never having heard of the product to a brand-new site in a week.

The first five customers came from direct conversations. Eric talked with people near him in a coworking space in San Francisco, a person-to-person approach. After the launch, growth shifted toward word of mouth and content, with paid experiments on the side. He said those paid tests cost "in the thousands," which he described as not a lot.

By December 2016, Propeller had a little over 50 customers and was growing about 21% month over month, with a 25% month-over-month increase in November. Eric estimated customer lifetime value at about $1,500, based on an average customer lifespan of roughly 30 months.

Revenue churn was nearly zero because upgrades offset cancellations. Customers often began with a few seats and added more as they found value. Eric said some paid experiments were effective and others were not, and that the company was still working toward a healthy LTV-to-CAC ratio.

Eric also believed AI would be a supporting feature rather than the core differentiator. He saw opportunities to use AI to extract information from email signatures and other sources to suggest who to email, but he considered the product primarily a productivity tool.

As of the interview, Propeller had about 50 paying customers averaging roughly $50 per month, bringing in about $2,500 in monthly revenue. The company was bootstrapped, and Eric said he was not interested in selling and planned to build the company for the long term.