📂 The First $1k MRR (& Beyond): Transistor

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When you're in scale-up mode and you have KPIs to hit... the pressure is on to deliver demos and signups. And it's a lot to handle: multi-channel strategy, remarketing, landing pages, email sequences, revenue ops, conversion rate optimization.

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This is The First $1k MRR (& Beyond), a series about how founders got traction for their startups, told by the founders themselves.

Product: Transistor.fm

Website: https://transistor.fm/?via=justin

Founder(s): Jon Buda and Justin Jackson

Launched: February of 2018

Current MRR range: $100k – $1M

What does Transistor.fm do?

​Transistor is a podcast hosting and analytics platform. Customers record their audio and then upload it to Transistor. Wel help them distribute their podcasts to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

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We’re passionate about helping people start their first podcast, as well as helping existing podcasters save money (they can start unlimited podcasts on our plan).

How did you get the first $1k MRR for Transistor.fm?

Our first customer was Cards Against Humanity, where Jon worked.

After that, I started reaching to people (individually) whom I knew. Many of them already had a podcast, or I knew had talked about starting one.

We also had a waiting list that people were signing up for:

We gradually opened up “early access” spots to folks on that list which allowed them to get a special price (as we built up our features).

How have you scaled Transistor.fm beyond $1k MRR?

Once we reached $1k MRR, the next big jump occurred when we stopped being in “early access” and launched officially August 1, 2018:

I often describe our traction milestones this way:

​https://justinjackson.ca/saas-trials

We really started to get traction (increasing trials every month), when our actions in these domains reached a tipping point:

• SEO: targeting keywords like “podcast hosting” “private podcast” “free podcast intro music”.
• ​Affiliates: partnering with sites who were ranking for certain keywords, and offering them ongoing keywords.
• Brand/reputation: folks hearing about our story, word of mouth, earning a reputation for being good at customer service.

How does your SEO strategy work?

For SEO, I'll often identify things I might have looked for when I was starting my podcasts (back in 2012). For example, I remember searching for thingslike "free podcast intro music," and "how to upload podcast to apple podcast." So I'll write pieces of content that answer those questions.

Another source of content has been networking and connecting with other creators. For example, I noticed an influencer on Instagram talking about her podcast script template. I asked her if she'd be interested in sharing it on our blog and she said yes. That became another piece of content we ranked for.

How did you attract affiliates?

I'd seen affiliates really do well for Nathan Barry at ConvertKit.

So, I started reaching out to folks I knew were in that group.

At the time, Matt Giovanisci was building a tool for affiliates. I went on his podcast (Money Lab) and mentioned our affiliate program. We got 2 of our first high-value affiliates through that.

High-volume affiliates definitely seek out generous affiliate programs (especially for web hosting, email marketing, CRM). For example, Adam Enfroy was one of our early affiliates. You can see the kinds of tools he recommends here: https://www.adamenfroy.com/

How much of your personal network and audience do you think affected the first $1k and beyond?

For the first $1k, it was definitely mostly our personal networks. This included bigger audiences like my Twitter followers and my newsletter, but also smaller groups (like people we’d worked with in the past).

But, I'm not sure how significant that first $1k MRR was (in the big picture).

It was definitely a nice boost and encouragement to have friends and acquaintances sign up. But it wasn't helpful in the sense that what got us to $1k wasn't repeatable or scalable for getting us to $10k, $100k, etc.

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