TJ
3.5K posts


Join our team if you’re a cracked developer.
- Office in the heart of Chicago
- Competitive pay and benefits
- Energetic + high agency culture
Open positions on LinkedIn
Richard Buehling@richardbuehling
HIRING FORWARD DEPLOYED DEVS IN CHICAGO benmore.tech/careers
English

How I went from software idea to $10M valuation in 7 months
(I don't know how to code, never raised $, and never worked at a saas company)
Let's get into it 👇🏼
When I first had the idea for Objectionly, I was running a sales recruiting/training business.
I'd place great reps with companies, but their performance was truly dependent on how well the sales leadership was managing them.
I interviewed 100 founders & sales leaders to find out how they managed reps, and found the problem.
Call Review.
Everyone hates doing it, but the best teams did 20+ hours a week of it and was desperate for solutions to cut back on time spent.
The low performing sales teams were barely doing it, because businesses under $5M a year are wearing too many hats to stay on top of this.
I asked all of them how much they'd pay for a solution to their problem, and this dictated my pricing.
From there, I went to a dev agency to get me a prototype (Shoutout @j_starte ).
Once that got finished, I recruited my now technical cofounder & CTO to finish the final touches of an MVP to bring the product to life so we can get it in customers hands.
In June, we got our first user before we really went to market.
18 sales reps managed by 1 head of sales. Impossible to manage by himself. I gave him a crazy discount just to see if it would help him.
...they went from $1.4M in June to $2.9M in July after using Objectionly
"Holy sh*t... this works" I thought, time to really go get customers.
Keep in mind, I threw $5k in the business bank account to get this alive, but we bootstrapped and we had virtually no money so I had to get scrappy.
We started signing on marketing agencies & sales agencies as affiliates, and that got us our first 10-20 users.
We used that cash to start running ads which rapidly accelerated growth, and used that momentum to raise our first round, which we're almost done raising.
As of today, we have a world class product, team, adding 3-5 paying users a day, and have the vision of becoming the default sales intelligence layer for SMB to mid market companies.
English

How I plan to achieve this:
1. Upgrade hiring funnel and candidate intake quality.
Sales isn’t our issue… we have a 1.5 month wait list rn. We need more good people consistently and at a higher volume.
At the agency we’re 70 team members in. Our service keeps getting better and clients more sophisticated. We need more quality candidates. We get good volume, and great candidates, but to get to $1M/mo while keeping low churn will rely on us improving our hiring quality while increasing quantity.
Plan: Hire another internal head hunter (or two) for targeted candidate outreach
2. Scale e-commerce brand group email mentorship program.
Looking to get at least $100k-200k/mo from this program. I have the reach, just need to button up the systems on it. We’ll see how this re-launch goes and how the program maintains as an evergreen offer. Re-opening on Jan 6th… 41 brands signed up ready to pay we’ll see how many actually convert when launch day comes + with my final week push.
3. Open low-ticket community
Looking for $100k/mo high margin from this. Planning in launching a $300-500/mo Skool community open to anyone with fire resources and live calls. Closing down my current free Skool with my low ticket products. Will move everything to this monthly community.
4. Close bigger $10k-20k/mo deals
We’ve got large brands but lack infrastructure on team organization to fulfill for some of these brands. We’re top notch for 7-8 figure brands but need more retention and strategic execution for larger brands. Working on this.
All of these should be in set and in place in Q1.
Speed.
Max Sturtevant@maxwellcopy
$1M/mo by the end of 2026 or die trying
English

I think after the industrial revolution, defense started to become completely obsolete
the internet, quantitative easing, advances in healthcare and artificial intelligence sped this up 100fold and we've now hit escape velocity.
if you were born in the middle ages the way to win was just "don't die"
wait it out
war of attrition
the cost of going to zero was insurmountable
but now, zero is a mirage. it's merely a suggestion.
look around you. look at sports. it's all offense - who can put up the most shots.
you can't even die from AIDS anymore. they nerfed AIDS.
the proletariat in you will fight against this idea because it's against your very DNA. you are the living result of a long line of people who lived in a reality where zero was very real and not to be messed with. defense was incredibly important.
the winners of today's society recognize the rules have been flipped and we're now in a completely different paradigm.
so act accordingly
empty the clip.
English

We all know volume negates luck, but it’s deeper than that. Volume creates data and data creates intuition.
It’s all one big casino, but enough data gives you intuition , *not* to always be right,
no one is always right.
Data gives you the intuition to have enough conviction in your decision to stick it out when it’s been a few losing hands in a row and conventional wisdom calls for a reassessment of strategy.
It’s all one big casino, but the rules have always been the same. Bet big, win big.
English

We actually did this and it’s pretty sick
TJ@j_starte
Fighting the urge to create a proprietary ERP for our day to day operations
English

if you are born in the US, you have unlimited upside and effectively 0 downside as long as you dont die, go to jail, or get addicted to drugs.
the only risk is not taking enough risk.
TJ@j_starte
advice from @thecarsoncloud that stuck with me: take more risks.
English
