When I started Herodesk almost three years ago, I had the same dream as many other B2B tech SaaS founders: We’ll build a company with a product team that builds a great product, and a marketing team that distributes it and ensures we get a lot of new customers.
Sounds easy, right?
If you’ve read this from me before, you’re not wrong. And reality is now, once again, showing me how wrong (or just naive, really) I was with that idea.
The idea itself and the goal are fine, but I’ve learned that it’s incredibly difficult to build and grow a new bootstrapped business like that. We can’t just pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads to grow.
There are, of course, a few companies that have managed to do it this way still and are fully product-led, continuously driving new inbound business. Shopify, HubSpot, Basecamp/37Signals, Beehiiv (the newsletter platform I just moved to, but we’ll cover that in another post), etc., just to mention a few.
But do you know what they all have in common that I don’t? They have huge distribution networks and/or lots of money. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people following them or their founders on different social media, newsletters, etc.
I’ve run this newsletter for about two years now and managed to build up ~12k followers on LinkedIn (which I’m proud of, and thank you for following me here! And if you know anyone who’s interested in startups and technology, please share my newsletter with them!), but you need to add a few 0’s to that subscriber count to make a difference. It’s growing, but it takes time.
At the same time, I’ve been talking with other founders who confirm this: the best and most efficient way to grow a B2B tech SaaS company is through direct outreach.
Hell, even my podcast buddy from SaaSkøbmænd.dk, Bo Møller, has started doing customer meetings to grow Aluta.com (an awesome subscription management service; check it out if you’re running a subscription business and are overpaying for Stripe).
I took the first steps on this journey half a year ago, when we hired two Account Executives. Signe and Daniel have been a part of the Herodesk.com team for almost half a year now and are doing a great job! But we want more!
One of the things we’ve (read: I’ve) learned is that it’s difficult for one person to fully own the entire sales journey, from qualifying cold prospects to closing the deal. The first part of the journey, qualifying prospects and doing cold outreach, is a special discipline. That’s probably also why almost all other companies have already split this into two roles… An SDR that books the meetings and an AE that closes the sale.
So now we’re doing the same thing, and we’re looking to hire a full-time Sales Development Representative to join Herodesk from September 1st.
If you know someone who might be interested, please share the job post with them: https://herodesk.com/da/jobs/
A few weeks ago, we had Nicklas Stephenson from Phone.inc on the SaaSkøbmænd podcast (btw., check out Phone.inc, a new phone solution for small businesses. It’s equally awesome and revolutionary in a very old-fashioned industry!). He built Firmafon 15 years ago, has been part of Trustpilot and is now on this new venture. One of the things he (re)confirmed from our talks afterwards was this approach, and that even San Francisco-based VCs now expect startups to have dedicated sales teams as part of their growth engine.
At the same time, I can’t help but think about Flatpay. The fastest-growing startup in Denmark, probably ever, with more than 100.000 customers in less than four years. Their secret and primary growth driver? Dedicated sales teams in every market.
There’s no silver bullet that does it alone. The trick is a channel mix of search engine optimisation and paid ads to drive traffic, founder-led marketing to tell the story, partners, happy customers (ambassadors) who do word-of-mouth to their network, and finally sales teams that do outreach to those who haven’t heard of us yet (and probably many other things, too). We (thankfully) don’t have VC money, so we can’t do it as fast as them, but as we continue to learn what works and what doesn’t, we adapt.
I know how great a product Herodesk is! We have almost 300 paying customers and crossed €30.000 MRR in June. Our churn remains low, and we’re growing every week. Our biggest challenge is still distribution. Telling more of the right people about our product. I’m 100% confident that adding this function to our growth engine and team will bring us closer to our next goal: Cash flow positive in 2026.