Thread by @agazdecki

2 guys created a $600,000 ARR SaaS company without ever meeting in person.

Here’s how it happened:

When @mynameis_davis met Vishal Kumar on Indie Hackers, he didn’t expect to co-found an award-winning social media scheduler and make a friend for life.

But that’s exactly what happened...

Davis and Vishal were a 17-hour flight away - but that didn’t matter.

Davis, a finance grad, used his marketing skills while Vishal, an engineer, built the MVP.

“Vishal had built a rough MVP of @talk2oneup,” said Davis.

“He’s a solid developer, but he’d be the first to say marketing isn’t his strong suit. So he was looking to partner with someone who could take over that side of things. And it’s been a great match.”

Their company, @talk2oneup, now boasts over 2,500 happy customers, two Capterra awards, and an ARR edging close to $1 million.

Despite their failed attempts at a face-to-face meeting, the relationship has flourished.

“We talked about meeting up in early 2020,” said Davis, “but then the pandemic hit and travel restrictions made it impossible. It didn’t stop us from becoming good friends, though.”

When starting, the question was how to differentiate OneUp in the market.

It started with pricing: HootSuite, Buffer, and Later charge up to four times that of OneUp’s basic paid tier.

“Usually, you don’t want to compete on price,” Davis said. “It just ends up a race to the bottom. But early on, we priced low to acquire customers and used their feedback to make the product better.

“Then once we’d reached feature parity with our competitors, we felt more confident raising prices as we’d made the product better. We added features they didn’t have, too.”

OneUp supports Google My Business which lets businesses post to their Google listing.

It also gives people the choice of posting from Facebook pages or their personal profiles.

Both of which, Davis argues, are seldom offered by competitors.

With Vishal polishing the product, pressure shifted to Davis’s launch plan.

Paid advertising was out of the question.

Aside from budget constraints, Davis worried it would be a waste of money.

Instead, they launched on @ProductHunt , won 4th Product of the Day, and also shared the news on @IndieHackers.

Then Davis rolled up his sleeves and started writing a series of SEO articles on social media marketing, from how to schedule posts to posting frequency to OneUp alternatives.

All would generate thousands in new business.

“I’d research popular search questions in our niche and answer them in blog posts. When someone searched that topic, they’d find our site in the first page of results. Of the people who clicked, some would take the free trial and some of those would become paying customers.”

Davis warns that content marketing isn’t an instant win, though. You need patience to see results.

So what’s next for OneUp?

“In a lot of ways, we’d love to stay a two-person company forever. It’s so simple. Because there are only two of us, we see all the feedback.”

“If a customer complains or requests a new feature, Vishal builds it in a day or two and then we can wow that customer the next day.”

While they briefly considered raising money, they don’t want to get stuck on the treadmill of constantly raising money.

“A lot of entrepreneurs recommend bootstrapping until you’ve got financial security,” Davis said.

“Then your next startup is your home-run swing. I guess I’d be open to funding if we needed it.. But we’re doing well and happy going it alone for now.”

Want to read the full story of OneUp? Check out Bootstrappers.com, our publication about bootstrapped startups: bootstrappers.com/these-co-found…