Thread by @jspujji

100 days ago, I co-founded a business. Totally bootstrapped.

Today, it’s doing $50K in MRR growing 50% per month.

Here’s the story...

I keep a long list of biz ideas that I've come up with over the years. In Jan, I decided to stop trying to find the “perfect” biz.

Instead, I’ll start a few!

If there is a big mkt, a clear value prop, I find the right people and I have an “unfair advantage” I will start it

Worst case, we shut it down. But I want more shots on goal.

So here’s the story: I’ve invested in 10+ DTC brands. I meet with their marketing teams regularly. I am consistently surprised by how UNproductive the “in-house” teams are. What they get done in a quarter takes an @ampush team <1 month. I started to ask why…

Turns out in-house marketing teams don’t typically leverage “off-shore” talent. Both McKinsey and Goldman had huge teams overseas to do all the “rote” work of consulting/finance. Formatting slides, reporting data, reach outs, simple research, etc.

I brought that strategy to Ampush pretty much from day 1. Over time, we built a 50+ person team offshore. But in-house brand teams didn’t have that resource.

The idea is simple: Full time, college educated growth/mktg/sales trained people to work directly on startups/DTC teams. We find, screen, train and place them with companies.

They do reporting, URL tagging, QA, video edit, creative formatting, SDR tasks, affiliate, influencer

But this idea sat on my list for YEARS.

I had the unfair advantage of my network + knowledge of Growth Mktg. There was a clear need and a big market.

I personally believe growth mktg is where software eng was in the 90s. So lots of opportunity in an outsourcing biz.

I was missing the right co-founder/CEO. Someone who knew HR, recruiting, people, ops and with the hunger of a first time entrepreneur...

The universe delivered. One of the best friends from middle school has run HR at a hedge fund for ~10 years.

She called and wanted startup advice: she was starting a daycare. She was ready to be her own boss.

But the daycare wanted a $1m upfront investment to build it!

A crazy energy ripped through me when she called! I said I HAVE THE PERFECT IDEA!

I spent the evening pitching her on it. We both trusted each other, we both compliment each other. She would be CEO and I would be Chairman. @aschwags3 is driving things while I help navigate.

She took a week to think and said “I’m in” - that was 2/10/2021...

Within a day, I bid and bought the domain: GrowthAssistant dot com. I got gsuite. We opened a bank account. Chargebee. Hubspot. Growth Assistants started building out the website, branding, etc. We ate our own dog food to start!

Adriane learned how to source/recruit/train people from the Philippines, the ideal location given the universities and english fluency. She built up a pipeline of trained and certified candidates quickly.

I called former Ampushers, industry contacts. “AMAZING IDEA JESSE!”

“ADRIANE IS SO HELPFUL!” "THESE GAs ARE GREAT!"

<30 days, we had our first sale. The amazing @niksharma was an early customer and mentioned us in an email... we got so much inbound, we needed a waitlist!

Fast forward to today (literally, 100 days later), we count DoorDash, Noom, Varsity Tutors, Candid and several others as clients.

The team is working as fast as possible to connect companies with great people in the Philippines who we have trained and vetted.

We take great pride in our GA team, helping them learn and providing unique career growth opportunities. We are getting more qualified resumes than ever!

I believe this can be a big business. It’s growing fast. It is dead simple yet adding a TON of value for all the stakeholders. And it’s serving a real need in the market.

Adriane is growing every day as a CEO and it’s been so fun to partner with her.

It’s not without challenges. We had to learn how to pay people abroad, get the right insurances, legally incorporate globally. We have lost a customer, had to replace a GA. There are growing pains.

So, what are the lessons?

1) Just start - The BIAS TO ACTION is the single most important part of entrepreneurship.

We could have analyzed the market, debated the merits, created a financial model in the time it took us to get to $50k!

We did none of that - we just started doing.

2) Leverage your unfair advantages - 10+ years in Growth Marketing and investing and I could see a clear need in the market + knew how to serve it.

There’s no question my knowledge and network are tied to our initial success here.

Don't apologize for it, use it!

3) People/partners matter - this idea was just a piece of paper until Adriane came along.

She took a chance and has worked so hard + been uncomfortable each day + open to learning/feedback.

Trust between us matters a lot as well as self awareness.

We think every startup/DTC Brand in the world will be a customer one day so come check out GrowthAssistant.com and join our waitlist.

Our needs survey will give you ideas for how you can use someone offshore and the team will be in touch ASAP to help with your placement.

Also, If you enjoyed this thread, please follow me @jspujji to learn more about entrepreneurship, bootstrapping, DTC, Growth Mktg and more!