Yannis

Bootstrapped an email marketing company to top-3 and an 8-fig exit, from Greece. Now writing about the grind. 0-100K MRR founders, this is for you.

[Yannis @yannnis]

Intro since I m 4 weeks old in X.

I'm Yannis.

Ex finance tech. Got bored to death. Built an email marketing company (Moosend) on nights and weekends while Greece was on fire. Grew to millions in ARR and sold for 8 figures to big tech.

Now I'm writing stories from the trenches here. May build something occasionally and posting the mess as it happens.

Stick around if that's your thing.

[Yannis @yannnis]

Enterprise for us was banks, insurance, big retail and companies like UNICEF and HPE. We always quoted transparently. Like you would get a deterministic price based on contact size and then added on features and services like dedicated ips, better deliverability, dedicated customer support, 24/7 etc

[Yannis @yannnis]

Years in SaaS and the easiest way I’ve found to grow ARR is still charging more.

We’d spend weeks discussing churn, competitors and everything that could possibly go wrong.

Usually before a customer had said a word.

The founder is often the first person to reject the new price.

[Yannis @yannnis]

Not disturbing at all. We were cost effective because it's a price sensitive industry. If your moat is "MailChimp but cheaper" you need to be cheaper. If your moat is simple e-commerce automations you can be a klaviyo.

Our thing was always that our email infrastructure was always flat price. Like we were EXCELLENT at it.

[Yannis @yannnis]

@nikpolale I would raise every year if I was doing it now

[Yannis @yannnis]

@nikpolale Not very often. Maybe once every 3 years. We grandfathered but you would go on the new prices if you changed your plan (up or down)

[Yannis @yannnis]

Today I m four weeks old on this app.

175 people decided to follow a guy who mostly complains about SaaS, growth and pricing.

The algorithm has officially noticed I exist.
It now shows my posts to 9 people instead of 3.

Progress.

Jokes aside, I’ve met more interesting founders in the last week than in the previous six months. Forever in debt to @nikpolale for the shout out.

Follow along if you care about SaaS, growth tactics that actually worked when we were scaling, or recipes involving Greek feta.

[Yannis @yannnis]

I've worked in startups, investment banks and giant software companies, and the only thing that really changes is the vocabulary.

A startup has a crisis. A bank has an incident. A corporation has a cross-functional alignment opportunity. Same fire every time, just better lit.

[Yannis @yannnis]

@Justin_lords Yeah . It's a brand new account

[Yannis @yannnis]

Last Friday was my last day in corporate.

People keep asking why I took a job after building and selling Moosend.

Honestly, I think I needed the job to realise I didn’t want one.

I learned loads, worked with great people and built interesting stuff.

I just missed starting with absolutely nothing and finding out whether anyone cares.

[Yannis @yannnis]

There are psychopaths and then there are people with 53,264 unread emails in their inbox.

[Yannis @yannnis]

@zuess05 Instinct

[Yannis @yannnis]

@zuess05 Why? Are today's factory shipped furniture better than handmade furniture?

[Yannis @yannnis]

@usmannn2000 I take this as a compliment. Thank you

[Yannis @yannnis]

@HsanC_ If you don't mind unsolicited advice? Change the name to something I can pronounce

[Yannis @yannnis]

@robj3d3 Genuine question from a superx user.

How did you decide to build it when there were another 50,000 X growth tools? Does that cap growth in your calculations?

[Yannis @yannnis]

I think paid ads is still the fastest way to validate a product.

That is if you don't have a following in some social media or email.

Agree?

[Yannis @yannnis]

@phuctm97 So the life hack is work through the night like a vampire while the rest of the world sleeps?

[Yannis @yannnis]

@JonBuildsHQ Don't get me wrong. Congrats for the views

But if one reply is taking you a minute incl scrolling then you spent 2+ hours on X. Isn't this like a part time job?

[Yannis @yannnis]

@wickedguro You only need to do this for long enough.

[Yannis @yannnis]

@kylegawley 10x devs were working for finance or tech. Now everyone is a 10x dev