Intro

Cold outreach failed. Product-led growth stalled. Joseph Lee couldn't get his first customers to pay for Supademo. In this episode, founders will learn how creative, non-scalable tactics like free Reddit demos and personalized product update replies generated thousands of signups and led to $1M ARR.

Joseph reveals why targeting early-stage founders as first customers didn't work, how shifting to 50+ headcount organizations unlocked stickier revenue, and the ungated free tools strategy that now drives over 50% of Supademo's traffic with 11-12% signup conversion.

Previously, Joseph ran Freshline, a B2B seafood marketplace that hit $3M in revenue before losing 95% during COVID. Supademo grew from $100K to $1M ARR in just 12 months with a team of 10.

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🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 Get first customers by leading with free value: Joseph created free demos for strangers on Reddit without expecting anything in return, generating Supademo's first several thousand signups and proving the product's value through action.
• 📉 Cold outreach fails without dedicated resources: Supademo tried outbound sales and it flopped. Doing outbound poorly is worse than not doing it - it requires deliverability, messaging, and full-time focus to work.
• 🛠️ Turn existing features into ungated free tools: Supademo repurposed built-in features like the screenshot editor as standalone SEO-optimized free tools pages, driving 50%+ of traffic with 11-12% signup conversion.
• 🔄 Shift your ICP when first customers don't stick: Early-stage founders loved Supademo but churned quickly. Moving to 50+ employee organizations delivered higher willingness to pay, stickier usage, and land-and-expand potential.
• 🚀 Model your SEO after proven playbooks: Joseph studied Zapier's programmatic SEO and adapted it for Supademo by embedding interactive demos in how-to content for high-volume keywords in adjacent categories.
• 🧠 Validate by feeling the pain yourself first: The Supademo idea came from Joseph's frustration at Freshline where product videos failed but live screen-sharing sessions converted immediately.
• 💰 Grow channel by channel, not all at once: Joseph focused on establishing one predictable channel at a time, building to 5-8 channels that run like clockwork.

Chapters

• Introduction
• What Supademo does and who it's for
• Revenue, team size, and growth metrics
• The Freshline story - a B2B seafood marketplace
• Driving a truck to deliver fish to restaurants
• Learning the seafood industry from scratch
• Building the product and getting first customers manually
• Growing to $3M revenue and then losing 95% to COVID
• Micro-pivots to survive the pandemic
• Leaving Freshline and starting fresh
• Where the Supademo idea came from
• Choosing early-stage founders as the first ICP
• Why the ICP shifted to larger organizations
• Getting first customers through free Reddit demos
• Responding to product update emails with Supademos
• SEO strategy modeled after Zapier's programmatic approach
• The challenge of being product-led
• Why "build it and they will come" doesn't work
• Growing channel by channel
• Ungated free tools driving 50%+ of traffic
• The state of SEO and AI-powered search
• Why cold outreach failed
• Lightning round and book recommendation
• Wrap-up

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Resources

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