Marie Martin, co-founder of Tally, shares insights on bootstrapping her company to $1.3M ARR with 300,000 users. She discusses how Tally keeps customer support low and differentiates itself from other form builders. The conversation explores their unique pricing strategy and effective cold outreach within no-code communities. Marie emphasizes the importance of simplicity and user experience in product design while highlighting the challenges of transitioning free users to paying customers.
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Tally's Success
Tally has 300,000 users, 4,500 paying customers, and $1.3M ARR.
The team consists of two co-founders and a part-time support person.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Minimizing Support
Keep products simple to reduce support volume.
Invest in documentation and tutorials for self-service support.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Cold Outreach for Free
Marie and Phillip did cold outreach for months to get initial users, even though Tally was free.
An early user offered to pay, even though there was no paid plan yet.
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In episode 717, Rob Walling interviews Marie Martin, co-founder of Tally. They discuss the company’s journey to $1.3M ARR and the unusual pricing strategy that got them there. Marie details how they keep their support volume low, how they differentiate Tally from other form builders, and how they grew to over 300,000 free users.
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Topics we cover:
2:22 – Where Tally is today
3:53 – Keeping customer support volume low
7:12 – Differentiating Tally from other form builders
10:55 – The ingredients needed to make “free” work
18:31 – ”Shrinking a Market”
24:27 – Growing to 300,000+ free users
26:47 – Dealing with bad actors
29:37 – Applying the learnings from Tally’s success
If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!
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