Episode Details

Matt Ekstrom built Prospectify in two months for $30K and hit $20K MRR in nine months. His SaaS sales process was pure hustle - outbound prospecting through professional groups, integration partnerships with Reply, HubSpot, and Salesloft, and founder-led customer success that turned users into advocates.

The SaaS sales process started with targeting Salesforce power user communities, then using Prospectify's own tool to verify emails and personalize startup sales outreach. Integration partners actively recommended each other during their B2B sales process conversations, creating a referral channel that cost nothing beyond the integration work.

Matt Ekstrom is the co-founder of Prospectify, a B2B prospecting platform that automates lead generation through data search, enrichment, and email verification. The company was self-funded for the first year before raising $1 million and joining TechStars.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🚀 Outbound SaaS sales process can replace inbound for early-stage companies: Matt targeted Salesforce power user groups to find prospects, then used Prospectify's own tool to verify emails and personalize outreach - no inbound traffic needed.
• 🤝 Integration partnerships drive mutual startup sales referrals: Reply, HubSpot, and Salesloft actively recommended Prospectify during their SaaS selling process, creating a referral channel that cost nothing beyond the integration work.
• 🎯 Founder-led customer success drives word of mouth better than automation: Matt personally contacted users who had not tried key features within a week. Customers appreciated the personal touch and many referred others because of it.
• 📉 Running a beta too short hides painful SaaS sales process surprises: Beta users were all experienced salespeople. When non-technical users signed up post-launch, many could not even install a Chrome extension.
• 💰 Rapid growth can overwhelm a two-person team: At $12K MRR, Matt and his co-founder were working 16-18 hour days. They raised $1 million to hire engineers and customer success staff.

Chapters

• Introduction
• What drives Matt and what Prospectify does
• How Prospectify differs from other prospecting tools
• The origin story and scratching their own itch
• Why they decided to build despite competing tools
• Skipping customer interviews and building in two months
• Three strategies that drove $20K MRR
• Integration partnership with Reply as a case study
• Getting marketing value from integrations
• Partner integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Salesloft
• Customer success tactics for early-stage growth
• Automated vs. manual customer outreach
• Outbound sales using professional interest groups
• Lessons learned from running the beta too short
• Diversity of customer use cases they missed
• Pricing challenges with different customer segments
• Rapid growth problems with two founders
• Plans for the $1M funding round
• Lightning round

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/138
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email