Semrush
April 20, 2023
It’s 2001 in St Petersburg, the cultural capital of Russia and Oleg Shchegolev pings his childhood friend Dmitri about this strange, new thing he’s learning about: Search Engine Optimisation. They start experimenting… writing code and taking SEO roles in Russian eCommerce businesses. Fast forward seven years and the first version of Semrush launches… and revenue doubles organically for four years up to $1m ARR before they both decide to jump in full time. By 2019, they hit $100m ARR, six million free users and over 60 thousand customers. How? This episode of Confessions of a B2B Marketer explains 🤓
What did we learn?
- Are you obsessed with your industry? If not, find one where you are…
- Spend months, if not years building something people like before broadcasting your SaaS to the world.
- Your first growth channel should suit the interest and skillset of the founders…
- How can you leverage the expertise and audience of industry influencers to grow your SaaS?
- When you start: focus. And then use those profits to expand your wallet share…
- How is your local language competition? Could you beat them if you translated?
- When building a sales team it may be best to have them first focus on expansion revenue.
- Instead of going out to raise cash, why not wait until your numbers are good enough that the VC’s want to come and work for you…
- It’s going to take time, but what are you doing today that is informing and reminding your market that you exist?
- Check out the full SaaS Marketer Growth Study here
- Get your tickets for SaaStock Dublin with a 20% discount here
- Check out our awesome sponsor SaaStock Dublin
- Check out our awesome sponsor HockeyStack
Confessions of a B2B Entrepreneur is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Check out our five most downloaded episodes:
Check out our five most downloaded episodes:
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- Nathan Latka Shares His “King-Maker Strategy"
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Guest submissions here: fame.so/cbe-guest
Our sponsor: Want to explode your organic traffic AND keep tabs on your competitors? Ahrefs' new $29 Starter plan lets you track content changes on ANY website, giving you the edge you need. Discover what's included and how it can transform your marketing strategy. Learn more here.