The document describes the story of how a company that grew 100% month-over-month eventually went bankrupt. It discusses lessons learned around gaining traction before fundraising, quantifying key metrics from the start, and optimizing conversions through product hacks and targeting niche audiences. The company developed increasingly sophisticated processes to generate qualified leads at scale, starting from manual research and moving to an automated bot to perform thousands of searches and identify sites with online shopping carts.

1. The story of how
went bankrupt
grew 100% month-on-month

2. What we did
Visits webshop Abandons purchase Sees retargeting ad Completes purchase
Webshop Crawls, scrapes Machine learning UI with all products
and unique banners
What a consumer does
What Admazely did

3. # of active customers
R&D
Active
fundraising

4. # of active customers
R&D
Bankruptcy
(FOUNDER) LESSON:
Gain traction before you need to fundraise
Jun/12 Aug/12 Oct/12 dec/12 Feb/1
2
May/12Jul/12 Sep/12 Nov/12 Jan/13 Mar/1
2
Apr/12

5. Our sales funnel in February 2013
Leads Qualified
leads
Calls
Demos
Pilots
MRR
GROWTH HACKER LESSON:
Quantify critical conversions from day one
Conversations
<40%60%8%30%??????
Skype logs
per sales rep
manipulating in Excel
(IF call duration >90
sec = conversation)
ZoHo CRM =
$25 / mth
e-conomic

6. NOW…
A FEW ACTUAL HACKS

7. Pilots -> MRR:
failed because of unknown unknowns
Leads Qualified
leads
Calls
Demos
Pilots
MRR
GROWTH HACKER LESSON:
Gain domain-specific knowledge as early as possible
Conversations
<40%60%8%30%??????
Optimising the
actual retargeting

8. Our ladder of sophistication
Surely, this is as
easy as scratching
my own ass
Dammit, I’m
spending a lot of
time in this interface
looking at reports
Nice, automated
data extraction to
Excel and loads of
pivot tables
Hmm… we’ve got a phd in machine
learning and a theoretical physicist in
our team – maybe they know a thing
or two about data…

9. Demos -> Pilots:
kind of solved it
Leads Qualified
leads
Calls
Demos
Pilots
MRR
Conversations
<40%60%8%30%??????
Product didn’t quite
work – so we hacked it

10. Builtwith
GROWTH HACKER LESSON:
Find niche audiences you can optimise for

11. Conversations -> Demos Pilots:
kind of solved it
Leads Qualified
leads
Calls
Demos
Pilots
MRR
Conversations
<40%60%8%30%??????
Pre-populating demo account with Shopify customers
own site/products made this metric explode
GROWTH HACKER LESSON:
Product (hacks) is the best way to optimise conversions

12. Conversations -> Demos Pilots:
kind of solved it
Leads Qualified
leads
Calls
Demos
Pilots
MRR
Conversations
<40%60%8%30%??????
No hack, just leadership

13. Conversations -> Demos Pilots:
kind of solved it
Leads Qualified
leads
Calls
Demos
Pilots
MRR
Conversations
<40%60%8%30%??????
This was where we were really
wasting time and money

14. What our idiocy looked like
Segment
• Small-to-medium webshops
• Owner/manager OR
• Marketing manager
• In UK
Process
• Buy D&B database
• Manually find company
online
• Try to figure out if they had
a webshop
• Find telephone number
• Call reception for name
• Convince reception to
transfer call

15. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms

16. Google Keyword Planner

17. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms
2500+ search
terms for
fashion

18. We wrote a robot/crawler

19. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms
2500+ search
terms for
fashion
Bot

20. Search thousands of terms one at a time

21. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms
2500+ search
terms for
fashion
Bot
Perform 1000’s
of google
searches

22. Click paid ads (= marketing budget)

23. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms
2500+ search
terms for
fashion
Bot
Perform 1000’s
of google
searches
Get list of
10,000’s leads

24. Click ad -> visit site

25. Look for ”basket/cart” in page source

26. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms
2500+ search
terms for
fashion
Bot
Perform 1000’s
of google
searches
Get list of
10,000’s leads
Get list of
10,000’s pre-
qualified leads

27. Get Alexa-rank for all

28. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms
2500+ search
terms for
fashion
Bot
Perform 1000’s
of google
searches
Get list of
10,000’s leads
Get list of
10,000’s pre-
qualified leads
Get list of
10,000’s
qualified leads

29. New process
Segment
(e.g. Fashion)
Brainstorm for
250 search
terms
2500+ search
terms for
fashion
Bot
Perform 1000’s
of google
searches
Get list of
10,000’s leads
Get list of
10,000’s pre-
qualified leads
Get list of
10,000’s
qualified leads
Handover to
interns
Call for info
Handover to
sales
Call to sell

30. RBITDAB
(Results Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciations,
Amortisations and Bankrupcy)
Apr-08 May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09 Feb-09 Mar-09
R&D
Jun/12 Aug/12 Oct/12 dec/12 Feb/1
2
May/12Jul/12 Sep/12 Nov/12 Jan/13 Mar/1
2
Apr/12

31. Hypothesis -> experiment -> data -> insight -> outcome
There are reasons why they test on guinea pigs before humans
Leverage others to hack your learning curve
Apply dev resources to sales and marketing
Love problem-solving, not specific solutions

32. Feel free to get in touch
@pschlegel
therkildsen.schlegel@gmail.com
+45 31142494