Growing a SaaS Startup in 2020

As founders or team members, we constantly have to think of efficient ways to acquire users and penetrate a potentially crowded/noisy market with very scarce resources.

Cut to the chase...

Get started with the world's first shared inbox designed for Gmail and Google Workspace.

Cut to the chase...

Turn your most effective emails into smart templates you can share with your team in Gmail.

I was invited earlier this year to give a talk at MassChallenge Switzerland explaining how Gmelius managed to get its first 100k daily active users with a marketing budget close to $0.

Growing an early-stage SaaS startup is a daily challenge! As founders or team members, we constantly have to think of efficient ways to acquire users and penetrate a potentially crowded/noisy market with very scarce resources. This leads to a situation where we feel lost, confused, and anxious because of the amount of stuff we need to focus on to make it happen.

Gmelius was founded at the end of 2016 and we managed to reach our first 100k daily active users 14 months later. This was an exciting and demanding journey that I try to summarize in the below presentation by focusing on what worked and what did not.

[slideshare id=109978423&doc=growingasaasstartup-gmelius-180815125820]

If I had to pick my best decision and my worst one, those would be, respectively:

Integrate our service with a large and fast-growing eco-system, i.e., G Suite.
Postpone the development of a KPI dashboard for our company. More on this topic: When to build a KPI dashboard for your SaaS startup?

The collaboration platform for Gmail.

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Gmelius empowers your teams to collaborate, manage projects, serve your customers, and automate workflows without leaving Google Workspace and your favorite daily apps.

Cut to the chase...

Get started with the world's first shared inbox that lives in Gmail.

Cut to the chase...

Turn your most effective emails into smart templates you can share with your team in Gmail.

Author

Florian Bersier

Florian Bersier is the founder and CEO of Gmelius, a groundbreaking platform that transforms business communication for Google Workspace users with its shared inbox and process automation solutions. A passionate skier and cyclist, Florian lives in the Swiss Alps with his wife and two young daughters. He holds a PhD in Complex Systems from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree from École Polytechnique in France. Florian is a Y Combinator Alumnus (YC S19) and a member of the Network of Excellence in Internet Science.