How Circleci.com Attracted 1,000 Customers in Its First 2 Years
You probably wouldn’t know just to look at him but Paul – at least according to his friends – is an intimidating card shark.
What’s also not obvious at first glance is how this savvy entrepreneur created and funded his company, attracting an impressive 1,000 customers in the first two years. Paul shares with us the details on cirlceci‘s beginning and rapid growth, including key pricing, marketing, and investor strategies.
He shares what they did that endeared them to their customers (and what he thinks all software companies need do in order to maintain customers).
If you’re interested in software startups, I suggest you take a listen to this podcast. (And check out all our software posts and interviews.)
Listen now and you’ll hear Paul and I talk about:
- (02:55) Introductions
- (03:55) What did you do before this?
- (06:00) How did you get started?
- (09:50) How did you create a competitive advantage?
- (12:10) How did you achieve product/market fit?
- (16:20) How does pricing play a role in product validation?
- (19:50) Tell us about how your assumptions have gone wrong
- (25:50) How did you start to generate sales?
- (27:00) How did Twitter play a role in marketing?
- (27:20) How did you fund it in the beginning?
- (28:50) How did you endear your early customers?
- (29:50) How did you go out and raise money from investors?
- (32:20) What did you learn from pitching investors?
- (33:45) What is the most fun part of your job?
Resources Mentioned
- circleci.com
- Brightideas.co/book
- InsideIntercom.io
More About This Episode
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Listen Now
About Paul Biggar
Paul Biggar is the co-founder of circleci, a state of the art automated testing and continuous integration and deployment tool. An expert in his field, Paul has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and has been featured on multiple HuffPost Live panels. His presentation at Google on compilers and programming languages was published as part of Google’s lauded Google Tech Talk Series, where it has been seen by over 20,000 people.Additional Resources
