Q

Daniel Kempies and Matthew built Q out of a genuine frustration they experienced while running their branding agency. They needed a way to consistently find and share quality content on social media, but the manual curation process was time-consuming and unpredictable. Rather than accept the pain, they decided to build a solution: a platform with strict quality guidelines that could automate content curation while guaranteeing only high-quality suggestions made it through to users. "We thought the idea of automating the content curation was great but having always good quality content going through, pushing through to social media was the main issue."

In 2015, they launched Q with a two-sided marketplace model. On one side, they served users who needed quality content for social media but lacked the time to find it. On the other side, they helped content creators—bloggers, Forbes and Mashable contributors—get their work distributed to Q users. To validate the idea before committing fully, they pre-launched on Beta List and received "really positive" feedback, which gave them confidence to pursue it. At the time, they were still running their branding agency, which was making just enough to "get by" and had potential but faced pipeline challenges. Q arrived at exactly the right moment: "the idea of Q came about at just the right time for us. So it saved our bacon."

They raised $200,000 from the Startup Funding Club in London to give themselves runway to focus on Q full-time. Interestingly, they'd pitched the fund a different idea six months earlier and been rejected—but when they returned with Q, "we hit gold." Early growth came through two key channels: first, they built "a really big network of influential people" through networking, getting them to promote Q and Qpromote to their audiences in exchange for access to the powerful content promotion system. This gave them "millions and millions of reach." Second, they ran a major AppSumo deal about a year and a half into the business, selling lifetime plans for $25 (when Q's standard plan was $10/month) and acquiring 5,000 customers in one deal. AppSumo kept roughly 70% of revenue, so Q netted around $30,000-$40,000 from the deal.

The AppSumo deal was a double-edged sword. While it brought massive cash injection and customer volume, it also brought challenges. The customers were "deal hunters" rather than genuine product believers, and on the Qpromote side, Q had to manually review all content, creating labor-intensive work for minimal return. Less than 5% of AppSumo customers actually used the service. A year after the deal, they reactivated about 300 AppSumo customers by offering them a 75% discount on monthly plans—they even created a "Love Actually"-inspired video apologizing for the switch to recurring revenue to reduce pushback. This was clever but illustrates Nathan Latka's broader criticism: AppSumo deals create legacy problems. The founders acknowledged they're "not going to run any more deals for a long time, because we stand to gain a lot more from naturally onboarding people through our own marketing."

Q now has 5,000 paying customers with a team spanning the UK (based in London), Spain, and Germany, plus two US advisors. They just transitioned from a transactional to fully recurring revenue model. Last year (2016), they did $251,000 in revenue and were profitable. Currently running at approximately $25,000 per month in revenue, with a goal to reach $350,000 for the year. Monthly churn sits at 8%—higher than ideal—and they've only recently started paid acquisition, spending $5,000-$7,000/month with an agency to test new channels. Average customer lifetime value is roughly $75-$80/month, though this stabilizes as the recurring model fully settles. The shift away from transactional and AppSumo deals reflects their ambitions: they want to be a premium, quality-focused brand, not a discount player.