SPRobot
Martin Hadding spent two decades as a Microsoft 365 architect helping financial services companies migrate to the cloud and build out enterprise applications. But as Teams adoption exploded—the platform now has over 200 million users—he witnessed a recurring problem: organizations spinning up workspaces recklessly, creating thousands of unused Teams and duplicate information scattered everywhere. People couldn't find what they needed, so they created more workspaces, perpetuating the cycle. Martin called this "content sprawl," and it became an itch he had to scratch.
In 2001, Martin and his business partner started BeSolve, a Microsoft 365 consulting firm that grew to $800,000 in annual revenue by 2022. By 2023, rather than scaling the grinding consulting business further, Martin decided to invest in a scalable, repeatable product. "The consulting business is just constant churn and constant grind," he explained. Alongside three full-time engineers and three part-time developers (who also did consulting work to pay the bills), Martin threw himself into the product—designing the entire UI, managing product vision, and handling all marketing and content generation himself. He'd written the first line of code exactly one year before the interview, and SPRobot was now in closed beta, 3-6 months from commercial launch.
Martin didn't need to cold-email strangers. The Microsoft 365 community is tight-knit, and over 20 years he'd built a large network of partners and thought leaders. He got extensive feedback from community experts testing the beta, and his consulting clients were lined up to run production versions immediately after launch. One or two clients would be among the very first paying users.
SPRobot remains pre-revenue but has clear product-market validation. The pricing model targets SMBs: per-tenant subscription at $150-200 monthly, aggressively underpriced compared to competitors like Sharegate, Orchestry, and Siskit. Martin's South African base (Cape Town) provides cost arbitrage—he maintains $5,000/month living expenses—which lets him price competitively. The team of six is funded by BeSolve's consulting profits, with Martin taking a pay cut and his partner running the agency while he focuses on product. The biggest anxiety: "It's easy to build it. It's harder to sell." Launch was imminent.
- •Martin solved a problem he encountered repeatedly over two decades in his actual consulting work, ensuring the product addressed a genuine, recurring pain point rather than an assumed market need.
- •His existing network of 20+ years in the Microsoft 365 community provided built-in early adopters and beta testers without requiring expensive customer acquisition.
- •He structured the venture to preserve cash runway by funding development through his consulting firm's $800K revenue while maintaining ultra-low personal expenses in Cape Town, allowing aggressive pricing that competitors couldn't match.
- •By maintaining a lean team (6 people, some part-time) and keeping the business bootstrapped, he avoided investor pressure to scale prematurely and could focus on product-market fit before aggressive go-to-market.
- 1.Identify a specific, recurring operational problem you've personally encountered in your professional work over multiple years, then validate that it frustrates others in your network before building anything.
- 2.Map your professional relationships and community standing in your domain, then use that network systematically for beta testing and initial customer recruitment rather than cold outreach.
- 3.If possible, fund product development through an existing profitable business or service offering in the same domain, keeping the venture bootstrapped and free from external pressure to monetize before product-market fit.
- 4.Price your offering 30-50% below direct competitors from day one by locating your team in a lower cost-of-living region, making it difficult for established players to compete without margin compression.
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