Zomentum

Shruti Gadgi spent years as an investor at Axial, backing early-stage SaaS companies. She noticed a recurring problem: partner programs and partner-driven revenue were a complete black box. SaaS companies and their reseller partners operated in separate silos, unable to collaborate effectively or see shared opportunities. In late 2018, she decided to solve this herself and co-founded Zomentum with an engineer who had worked at Twitter and had deep familiarity with partner teams.

The founding team didn't rush to code. Instead, they spent the first 9-12 months on customer research and thesis validation. As a two-sided network, they faced the classic chicken-and-egg problem: which side should they attack first? They made a strategic choice to go partner-first, reasoning that if partners succeeded in selling more, SaaS companies would naturally benefit. This focus paid off. They didn't write a single line of code until 12 months in—a deliberate pause to ensure product-market fit before scaling engineering. After validating the thesis, they raised a $4M seed round.

Once live, Zomentum saw explosive product-led growth on the partner side. Their demo-to-paid conversion rate hit 55-60%, a benchmark Shruti had never seen at Axial. The product resonated: partners could use the platform to find opportunities, collaborate with SaaS companies, and close deals. Churn stayed remarkably low at sub-0.5% monthly. Within months, they had accumulated 2,800 paying partners across their network, each paying between $70-200/month depending on when they signed up and feature tier. The SaaS company side came later, with a more traditional enterprise sales motion requiring outbound and events.

The partner-first strategy worked brilliantly. Of their 4,000 total network members, roughly 2,800 are paying partners generating $190,000 in MRR. SaaS companies, which only launched as a revenue motion two quarters ago, now contribute 40% of revenue despite being newer. Their four-person sales team in Bangalore proved that US SaaS companies could be sold to by Indian reps closing deals entirely over inside sales—a model that contradicts the playbook at many Indian software companies but works when paired with the right talent. SaaS company acquisition remains heavier on outbound and events, as positioning a two-sided channel network is still unfamiliar to most.

Zomentum hit $250,000 MRR as of the interview, an 8x increase in 12 months. This growth rate was strong enough to convince investors of the network's potential: they closed a $13M Series A at roughly a $100M post-money valuation despite only doing $35,000 MRR at the time of close. Shruti's thesis—that the network itself, not early monetization, is the star metric—resonated with VCs who drew parallels to LinkedIn's early journey. Today, Zomentum's network touches over 1.5 million businesses and is becoming the de facto platform for SaaS companies to launch and scale partner programs. With 75 people (including 38 engineers), the company is focused on deepening network effects and exploring new monetization avenues as the community matures.