Unraveling the SEO Magic: 3K SaaS Signups in 4 Months!

I think if you SEO can happen pretty quickly, people think it takes six

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months, but if you have a page and people

are searching for it, and there's low

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competition, you're going to be found.

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Upendra Varma: Hello everyone.

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Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast.

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I'm your host Upendra Varma.

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And today we have Adam Stone with us.

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Adam is the founder and CEO

of a company called StartAdam.

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Hey Adam, welcome to the show.

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Adam Stone: Thank you so much.

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Appreciate it.

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Upendra Varma: So Adam, that's an

interesting company name here, right?

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So what does your product do

and why customers pay you money?

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Adam Stone: Well, it sounds for automated

data, automated management for the record,

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which happened to be the perfect name.

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So I'll happily change my name.

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It's no problem.

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Uh, what we do is we communicate,

sorry, we consolidate communication

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tools together fundamentally, right?

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So we connect Slack, Microsoft Teams,

WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, text message,

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and then we can do interesting things,

um, with, with the chat in that context.

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We can start to be.

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Bring products into the conversation,

like SAS tools that you use, CRM tools.

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Um, so each party can contextually

use the tools that they need.

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In the context of the conversation that

you're having with the other person.

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So after this call, you know, you could,

uh, we could chat together from your

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WhatsApp to my Slack account, for example,

using what we call, uh, an a link.

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So I have a dot link slash Adam stone.

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If anyone wants to connect

with me afterwards.

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Um, but yeah, we're mainly

focused on sales, customer

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success type type experiences.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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That makes a lot of sense.

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And can you talk a bit about this, right?

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So, I mean, it looks like a horizontal

platform that potentially anybody

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in the world can use it, right?

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So what's, what's the

thought process here, right?

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Why just stick to like, who

are you focusing on today?

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Is it just

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Adam Stone: Yeah, so we actually get

a lot of, uh, we get a lot of inbound

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traffic, actually, because we have

search terms like connect, uh, WhatsApp

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to Telegram, for example, and so we

get a lot of inbound, uh, and a lot

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of those are B2C, right, and we ignore

them, but there are some B2B ones

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in there, so we're a freemium model.

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In our outbound, we choose to focus

on the sales and customer success

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experience because we found that

adds the most, that we are able to

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add the most value to those teams.

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Um, because it helps you maintain a

better relationship with your customers

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or your prospects or your leads,

and then stay in touch with them

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for the life cycle of your journey.

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And then it helps the entire team because

the transcript of the conversation,

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let's say with a salesperson.

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And to a lead between WhatsApp

and their Slack account, um, that

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synchronizes to the company's CRM.

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So all of a sudden, even though

a salesperson's using WhatsApp to

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communicate, the communications still

end up in the company's own CRM.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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Right.

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And I want to understand

your customer base today.

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Right.

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So like how many paying customers do

you have on your platform as of today?

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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So I'm probably not going to talk about

how many and how much and stuff, but,

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Upendra Varma: give, give me, give

me a sense of, you know, how people

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are using your product, right?

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Who are these people?

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Right.

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So how many you have maybe on an

overall user account, whatever

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that is, right, that you're

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Adam Stone: yeah, of course.

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So we, we launched our product

about three or four months ago now.

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Um, and in that time we've had more than

3, 000 customers, sorry, 3, 000 users,

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uh, sign up, uh, on a freemium model.

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So that could give you an idea.

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So we get up to 20 a day now.

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Upendra Varma: All right.

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So like my next question, like where are

you getting all of these people from?

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Like, how did you sort of, you know,

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Right.

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So what's been working for you?

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Where are they discovering you?

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Adam Stone: have a background in SEO, so

I think that's been very helpful for us.

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We also have a product in a space

that other people just don't

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really have compelling products.

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So it's, you know, we

found a niche, I would say.

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Um.

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The other thing is we have some

innate virality in the product.

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Like if I'm talking to you, then

I brought you onto the product.

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And then maybe one out of five,

one out of 10 of people like you

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will end up using the product.

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Yourselves or themselves, uh, and so on.

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So we do have innate, I would call it

like a two to one viral coefficient.

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At least you can also create

cross platform groups, right?

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So if someone wanted to create a group

with 500 people and make it a broadcast,

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like if you want to stay in touch

with your podcast network, you could

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have, um, a link for your podcast,

um, that people can join that creates

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a cross platform group so people can

join from WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack,

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text message, whatever they like.

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And you can broadcast messages out.

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Right.

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But the good thing for us is if you

do that, and that's a paid feature.

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So we get paid for that.

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Um, you actually bring on 100 or

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Um, so,

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Upendra Varma: So can you

just try to quantify this?

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Right.

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So, I mean, uh, because it's interesting

in the sense that, okay, you've

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got this SEO background, right?

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But how have you been able to sort of,

you know, get all such customers in

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just such a short, short amount of time?

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Have you been working on lead

generation for a while now,

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because it takes time, right, to

get ranked for all of these terms.

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So what's

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Adam Stone: I think if you SEO can happen

pretty quickly, people think it takes six

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months, but if you have a page and people

are searching for it, and there's low

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competition, you're going to be found.

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For that search term,

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Upendra Varma: and can

you quantify this, right?

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So when have you been putting in,

you know, efforts to sort of like

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this SEO content and what sort of

content are we talking about here?

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Adam Stone: not necessarily content, as

you might think about it, it's more just

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having a page available on the site.

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So you need to have the foundations

for SEO, otherwise it doesn't work.

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Like Google can't just

know what you do, right?

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Just like a user can't come to

your site and know what you do.

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So I think about Google and, uh,

users in the same vein, actually.

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What's good for the users is good for us.

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Upendra Varma: Right.

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So like quantify this, just so you've

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Can you just approximately let me like

how many of them discovered through one of

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this organic, you know, SEO search, right?

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Can you just put a number there?

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Adam Stone: 90 percent of them.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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So now my question goes right.

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So all I'm understanding is right

to a couple months back, you, you

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came up with this bunch of landing

pages that users are searching for.

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And now like you've, you've like,

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like three months, like that,

that just looks too, too amazing.

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Right.

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So like, what, like what, what's,

what's the secret sauce here?

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Right.

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So what's been working here?

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Was this just, you know, what's

your keyword strategy or can

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you just talk about that?

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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I mean, so we're fortunate because

we've got a lot of different

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combinations of keywords, right?

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Connect Slack to my HubSpot account.

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You know, that would be one of them.

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Connect WhatsApp to Telegram

would be another one, right?

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And then there's the more business

oriented ones, like you could imagine.

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Connect Slack to Microsoft

Teams would be a valuable one.

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That one actually I don't think is our

highest volume and that probably is

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a little more competition, but really

the competition is nonsense because

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nobody's doing what we're doing.

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So, um, it's a difficult

problem that we've had to solve.

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It took us about a year of development

where it should have taken three months.

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Um, yeah, so I think it's a

combination of good SEO strategy

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and having a product in a niche that

is sort of not really looked at.

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I think that's the idea of SaaS, right?

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You want to have a software in

a space where you have a niche.

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And I think SEO is a really

good way of validating that.

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Upendra Varma: So essentially

connect X to Y that's, that's the

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keyword that you've been focusing

with X and Y being your variables.

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And then you've got whole bunch of, you

know, iterations and then you've just

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built landing pages for all of those.

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Right.

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And that's driving almost

all of your traffic today.

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Adam Stone: Yeah, you could say that.

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Upendra Varma: That's, that's wonderful.

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Right.

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So, and like, what's

the plan going forward?

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And just tell me, right.

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Have you managed to convert any of these,

you know, free users to page users?

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Is there a good conversion rate there?

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Adam Stone: Yeah, while we've been

on the call, someone signed up.

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Upendra Varma: So can you quantify,

are you comfortable with that?

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Adam Stone: Uh, can I,

sorry, say that again?

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Upendra Varma: for every

hundred users signing up, right?

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So how many of them are actually

ending up on your paid plan today?

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Adam Stone: Yeah, I'm probably not

going to talk too much about that.

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I'd say it's on the earlier stages, right?

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So it's not, um, happening

on a basis that I could even

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quantify that question, right?

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Um, because most of the users,

we're only rolled out billing

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about a week or two weeks ago.

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Um, we were doing outbound, right?

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And we allowed people to sign up

and we were testing things like

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we actually effed up, um, quite a

bit, which I'm happy to talk about.

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Um, killed our growth for a month by

trying to charge all of our free users.

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Um, but yeah, it's only been like

a week or two since we've actually

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had billing baked into the product.

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Upendra Varma: what else have you

been trying apart from, you know, SEO?

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So, and obviously apart from the virality

part that that's embedded in your product,

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like, is there anything that you've

been, you talked about outbound, right?

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So

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Adam Stone: Yeah, I think.

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It's, it's funny cause like you look at

the scalable channels and then you look

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at the unscalable channels and sometimes

they perform the same as each other.

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Right.

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So in our example, I would say,

uh, SEO channel, uh, which performs

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really well from a freemium base,

but then, uh, LinkedIn, for example,

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press articles, these things that

I would call somewhat unscalable.

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Those have led to like an equal

or if not higher amount of

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revenue that's been brought in.

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than the actual, you know, SEO that's

bringing in thousands of users.

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So I think it's important to be

doing both things at the same time.

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Like you can work on scalable

things, but then you need to do

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things that don't scale as well.

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Um, engaging with your audience,

building an audience, all that stuff.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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So Adam, just, you know, go

back like six, 12 months before.

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Right.

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So how did it all start?

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Right.

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So where did you get the idea for

this product and you know, how have

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you started, you know, building the

brand and the whole thing here, right?

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So just walk us through that journey.

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Adam Stone: Yeah, it was

kind of a fun journey.

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Um, so we started building about eight.

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Uh, eight years ago, uh, under,

under Speedlancer, which was my old

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freelancing marketplace platform.

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That was the first verticalized

freelancing marketplace.

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Nobody else was doing freelancing

marketplaces at the time other

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than Upwork and Fiverr, right?

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And then there was us.

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So we got a bit of a name,

a name for ourselves.

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We had a couple of thousand customers,

um, paying, um, uh, but you know, during

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COVID, like everything sort of shifted.

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And 700 marketplaces popped up.

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Everything became really competitive.

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Um, so we were kind of at a

high, and I knew it was going

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to be a high for Speedlancer.

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So I let it actually taper

down to basically zero.

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Um, but during that time, we

were focusing on the SaaS.

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And so what we did was we took the

software that we had spent years

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building for Speedlancer, which would

connect freelancers with companies.

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via their communication tools.

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Um, it was actually specially built

for Slack to Slack before Slack had

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their own Slack Connect product.

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Uh, and in fact, we were the first Slack

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Um, which is, I guess, our claim to fame.

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But that, it became StartAtom,

which actually started as a

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project management tool, and then

we focused on, on sales piece.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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And that's how it started.

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Right.

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And like, so what was, what

was the goal on day one?

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Right.

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Was it always about, you know, just using

SEO and, you know, virality or what else

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are you planning going forward here?

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Adam Stone: No, it was terrifying.

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I, um, spoke to a couple of investors.

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I told them we weren't really raising.

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We didn't even have a product yet.

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Um, I sort of wanted their thoughts.

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We ended up closing around accidentally

pre product and everything.

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Uh, I think we had, you know,

we have a really good team.

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My CTO is a, uh, an ex

AI professor of 35 years.

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So, um, got an amazing team, but

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Upendra Varma: how big of a

team are we talking about today?

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Adam Stone: uh, right

now it's about six of us.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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So we're pretty lean, but.

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Lean and mean, but, um, we, we came, we,

we, at that time before we had a product,

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I mean, we didn't have a product, right?

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So we definitely didn't have

a go to market strategy.

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Um, I remember telling someone at

like a party, like what I'm, what

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I'm working on, what I'm doing.

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And they're like, they're asking me

what's your go to market strategy.

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And I'm like, it'll unfold.

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You never know.

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You don't know what

channels are going to work.

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Right.

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So you just have to try things.

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And all of a sudden SEO was taking off

with Speedlancer SEO did not take off.

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And I thought it would take off.

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Right.

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Like for Fiverr, it took off for us.

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It didn't, uh, for my e commerce

business, uh, SEO was the main, um,

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was the main way of us getting traffic.

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So there's no rhyme or reason about it.

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I didn't think that we get any traction

on LinkedIn just by posting, but look, I

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think people resonate with the concept.

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People resonate instantly with the

frustration of too many communication

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tools, and so it's about finding the B2B

use case for that and then going for that.

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Upendra Varma: So Adam, I can't

see a pricing page on your, you

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know, on your homepage there.

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Right.

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So like, was it

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Adam Stone: is one.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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I couldn't, I tried from my place

and be, I'll just try it again.

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Right.

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So I, I thought like there's this talk

to sales being that, you know, main CTA.

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Right.

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I thought it would be, you know,

enterprising deals that you were

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trying to push from day one.

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Is that what you're looking at?

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Adam Stone: Uh, we're kind of

doing a two fold strategy, right?

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We're accepting whatever inbound leads

we get, inbound customers we get, and

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then we have the outbound strategy as

well, which is more enterprise focused.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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So yeah, what's, what's, what's

going to happen in the future, right?

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So now what, what are you investing

your time and efforts going forward?

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Right.

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So are you going to scale

your outbound team or what,

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what's, what's going to happen?

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Just.

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What

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Adam Stone: Yeah, we're hopefully

about to hire our first, like, head

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of sales to go after enterprise.

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Um, meanwhile, we have a bunch of

enterprise leads that we're going after.

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So I'm hoping those will close and

we'll be in a really good position by

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the time that's done, um, just closed

out next funding round, which is great.

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Upendra Varma: And then have

you managed to sort of close

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any enterprise deals so far?

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I mean, is it

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Adam Stone: Yeah, we have.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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And just talk about

the sales cycle, right?

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So how big of a deals

are we talking about?

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Is it a 100, 10, 000 deal?

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Like what's that sweet

spot look like today?

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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Right now.

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They're like five figure.

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Um, and I think we've got a

few more of those that will

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probably be five figure deals.

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Um, six figure deals.

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We've had a few leads that

haven't, um, haven't closed them or

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Upendra Varma: And then, and like,

so just pick, like, I just want to

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understand the motion here, right?

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So for majority of these enterprise

deals that you're trying to close.

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Are they inbound?

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Are they, you know, these outbound leads

that you've sort of managed to reach

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Adam Stone: bit of both, you could

call them like channel partnerships or

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inbound, a mix of both of those things.

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Uh, and then we've had some come, you

know, fully inbound through SEO and such.

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Um,

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Upendra Varma: and like, what

does the sales cycle look like?

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Because I'm asking you

specifically, right?

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Because this, this does look like

a novel product, you know, that's,

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that's not, you know, it's not a

replacement of anything, right?

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It's more like something, a

newer way of doing things, right?

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So, I mean, it's not easy to

sell something like that, right?

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That they're going to be a lot of,

you know, questions, all of it, right?

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So like, how does the

sales cycle look like?

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Are, are your customers comfortable, you

know, accepting, you know, your product?

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What's happening when you go

into those sales conversations?

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You just give us a sense of that.

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Adam Stone: no, I mean, they're

pretty positive and fast moving.

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I mean, we had someone sign up within

a day and someone pay us annually

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upfront, you know, for Multiple users

and then upgrade two months later

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and pass annually for those upgrades

and pay four times as much as they

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had been, um, today we've got a I.

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T.

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approval process starting for a

lead that we spoke to a week ago.

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So they're pretty quick.

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I think I don't know if I agree with

your assumption that because it's

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a new product, it takes a while.

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Like, I think,

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Upendra Varma: So, okay.

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My question was a bit different, right?

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So in terms of competitive

landscape, right?

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So are you positioning yourself against

any, you know, existing competitors?

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Do you have any of those?

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Adam Stone: um, I'm definitely

not positioning ourselves,

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ourselves against, um, competitors.

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Right.

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If they come up in a conversation,

it's like people focus so much

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on competition, but as far as I'm

concerned, nothing's competition

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until my customer says it to me.

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Right.

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If they go, Oh, why would I

use you instead of so and so?

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And I can't answer the question,

then that's, then that's

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the true competitor, right?

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If someone exists in a, in a very

fringe market or requires a lot of

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integration, or they haven't spoken

to the customer that we spoken

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to, then there's no competition.

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And I'm certainly not about to tell

the customer about any competition.

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Um, although I'm not aware of

any competition that would, uh,

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that I would need to disclose.

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But, um, yeah, does that

answer the question?

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Upendra Varma: Yeah, in a way it does.

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Right.

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And can Zapier do all of these that

you mentioned or, you know, are you

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doing something way more than that?

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Adam Stone: Yeah, no, we,

we integrate with Zapier.

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Um, it really has very

little to do with us.

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Zapier doesn't do cross

platform communication.

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Um, we do.

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Right.

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So you could maybe send a single

message from one platform, maybe to

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another platform, but still you need

to onboard the other user, right?

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So if I want to talk to you and I'm

going to make you give me your API key.

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Uh, I think you're just

going to prefer email.

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So there's a lot of work that goes

into, uh, making the experience

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really as magical as it can be.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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All right, Adam, thanks for

taking the time to talk to me.

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Hope you scale your company

to much, much greater heights.

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Adam Stone: No, I appreciate it.

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Thank you.