Two entrepreneurs scaled from $0 to $300M+ in revenue and were Cash Flow positive from day 1… 👇
After graduation, Acton Smith started a company selling toys and gadgets online.

Meanwhile, his friend, Alex Tew was becoming an internet celebrity by building the Million Dollar Homepage.

This shared passion for entrepreneurship made them fast friends.
Despite starting 3 successful companies with exit opportunities, Acton Smith found himself stressed and with little motivation to keep working.

His friend, Alex Tew, suggested he tried meditation.

That was the start of Calm. It started as a simple website.
Calm App was created in 2012 between Acton Smith and Alex Tew. But they were late to the party...

Their biggest competitor, Headspace, had raised $75M in funding and had 150 employees, while Calm remained at only $3M with 20 people on their team.

Yet, within 7 years...
Calm surpassed Headspace and is growing faster... Source: business of apps. How did they do it? Here are the lessons I learned...
1) Figure out what your customers want.

Early on, Calm noticed a weird pattern in their data. Usage spiked between 9-11pm each night. Then it hit them: users were using the app for SLEEP.

They pivoted the whole business based on this insight and started crowing quickly.
The beauty of any internet biz is analytics.

Every single thing your customer does, you can track.

You can see WHEN, HOW, and WHO is using your product. Use this data consistently to better tailor your product.
2) Freemium + Investing in your paid experience = magic.

We all know the freemium model can work.

Calm has been able to grow their free to paid sub rate from 2% to 5% over the years.

How? They’ve kept the free experience the same while significantly improving the paid product.
3) Annual billing can fund your growth.

Most subscription COs charge monthly.

Calm charges annually: $70. This fee funds marketing costs, tech, content, etc. After that, renewals are pure profit.

Calm has the holy grail of negative CCC!

4) Build a brand.

Calm early on used celebrities: Lebron as a spokesman. Matt McConaughey reading stories.

The founders of Calm think about the brand similar to Disney. Hotels? Branded products? An Island?! The name itself is winning: Calm

Brand is the ultimate moat.
If you want to learn more and enjoyed this thread, follow me @jspujji and check out my new Business Breakdowns podcast with special guest (my brother) @VPujji where we dive deep into Calm. Such a cool story:

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More from @jspujji

10 May
Ok. I have a confession to make.

This might make me unpopular.

But I believe going to a “traditional college” is still important and relevant.

AMA.
My reasons: 1) there’s a joy in meeting people and forming lifelong bonds hard to replicate outside this experience. 2) structured learning is still helpful and meaningful. Grades do demonstrate credibility, determination, smarts, etc
3) like any shift in responsibility/life, there’s maturing that happens that’s valuable. 4) networking and “brand” are still valuable. 5) doors that colleges are open for careers services are real.
Read 5 tweets
4 May
She turned $70K into a company worth over $30 BILLION and broke every rule along the way.

Thread time about one my favorite bootstrapped GIANTS 👇👇👇
1) In 1979, Judith Faulkner (by herself) founded Human Services Computing, Inc which became Epic in Madison, Wisconsin with a $70K investment.

She was a computer science and passionate about healthcare. But it took several years before success...
2) After 4+ years of development, she created the first electronic medical records system.

Ahead of its time, Epic took another 2 years before the company hit $1M in rev.

Judy was known for high standards, determination and a "yes if" culture. But growth wasn't huge, yet..
Read 10 tweets
29 Apr
A lot is written about metrics for a VC funded entrepreneur: burn rate, mos of runway, time to next funding, etc. I have bootstrapped multiple cos to 8 figures in revenue + invested/see into several more. What metrics matter for the bootstrapped entrepreneur? A thread…
Below are my "top 5" metrics + examples + tactics for an early stage company with little to no funding Note: these metrics can be used by VC backed entrepreneurs trying to stretch a dollar/be resourceful with cash. Let the countdown begin...
#5 - Debt capacity against assets/sales - one of the most important things we did early @ampush was we borrowed (factored) against our receivables. Back then, it was still pretty old school/sharky but today there are myriad of options like @getclearco, @AssembledBrands & settle
Read 24 tweets
29 Apr
If you are a CMO or marketer complaining about rising CPMs, you are outing yourself as a bad marketer. Short 🧵
FB and other platform CPMs are set by the marketplace bidding on impressions (what other companies are willing to pay). If your CPA is growing at the same/faster rate as market CPMs, it means your marketing is not improving relative to other marketers.
Consistently and rapidly testing TO find better creative, better LPs, better offers, etc is the only way to improve your yield per impression. And then your CPA should DECREASE even as CPMs INCREASE.
Read 4 tweets
27 Apr
Do yourself and spend 5 mins watching this TED talk by my friend @RicElias. The 3 things he learned while his plane crashed never get old... 👇🏽ted.com/talks/ric_elia…
1. What would you get done that you’re waiting on because you think you’ll be here forever?
2. How would you change your (most important) relationships and the negative energy within them?
Read 5 tweets
8 Apr
This thread is for first time entrepreneurs who are struggling. It is 11 years ago.. 6 mos after leaving Goldman Sachs to bootstrap, work 100+ hour weeks, we launched @ampush. After 3 days and $10k spent in ads, we had generated <$500 in revenue. In short, we had failed...👇
First, what was the biz? We found potential students for online universities by buying search ads that went to our "matching engine." If we paid $1 per click and 5% of clicks matched, our cost would be $20 and the schools would pay $40. We would print $, right? wrong!
Our conversion rate was closer to 0.1%. We were F****d. But how could that be? Our financial model said we'd print $, we built keyword scrapping tools, we had a unique bidding framework from "wall street", our matching engine was built with super slick javascript...
Read 14 tweets

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