📂 How this company went from $0 to $54k MRR on launch week

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Today I'll be sharing a case study from my friends over at Rewardful.

When most software companies think about launching, the first thing they often think about is Product Hunt.

While Product Hunt might give you an ego boost, the reality is it’s only an ideal place to launch if your target audience overlaps with Product Hunt’s audience.

Product Hunt can give you a lot of traffic if you’re lucky enough to land in the top spots and make it into the newsletter. But why focus on vanity metrics like traffic from an often irrelevant, low purchase intent (and price sensitive) audience when you can drive meaningful revenue from your launch?

Founders Matthew Pattoli and Grant Cooper decided to take a different approach to launching Cometly.

As a pre-launch & bootstrapped business with limited resources, Cometly built the initial version of their product for a very specific niche. Then they did something clever –– they partnered with one of the top affiliates with an existing audience in that market.

They began searching for affiliate software that works with SaaS companies. Matthew recalls there were tons of options for affiliate software, but not many that were built for SaaS. “We absolutely love Rewardful’s platform. It was super easy to set up – took us 1 hour from start to finish, including the integration. Other platforms were complicated to set up and would break during common SaaS scenarios”, said Matthew.

Given they were planning to launch with a prominent affiliate, they wanted to create a strong impression. “We love the UI & UX of Rewardful. The aesthetics are amazing. Most other platforms look outdated and feel clunky, which we didn’t want to associate our brand with”, said Matt.

The launch began with a co-marketing webinar with the affiliate where the Cometly team introduced the platform and a special “founding user” offer for the attendees. After the webinar, the doors remained open for one week before the offer expired.

Using Rewardful to launch with affiliates, Cometly went from no revenue to $53.8k MRR ($646k ARR) in the first week of launching their product. Given many paid annually, Cometly generated over $251,000 in cash flow from the launch ($147.5k on launch day, $103.5k the remainder of the week).

It also illustrates the power of partnering with B2B influencers as affiliates. Massive!

—Corey

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