Adam Stone, CEO of StartAdam, sheds light on how his unique communication consolidation tool skyrocketed in user acquisition using the power of SEO. By connecting platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, and Telegram, StartAdam simplifies B2B communication in an ingenious way.

Here’s what you'll discover:

• 🤖 Behind the Brand: Dive deep into how StartAdam evolved from its early beginnings as Speedlancer.
• 🎯 Pinpointing Pain Points: Understanding the challenge of scattered B2B communication tools and offering a seamless solution.
• 🔍 The SEO Play: How Adam leveraged his SEO knowledge and the powerful keyword formula "Connect X to Y" to dominate user acquisition.
• 📌 Unique Positioning: Discover why Adam doesn’t see other platforms as competitors and how StartAdam offers an experience unlike any other.
• 💼 Enterprise Insights: The dual strategy for both inbound and outbound leads, and how they seal the deal with big companies in record time.
• 🔒 Security and Integration: Why simple solutions like Zapier can't rival what StartAdam offers and how they ensure seamless cross-platform communication.
• 💡 The Future Vision: Adam's upcoming strategies and the next steps in the StartAdam journey, from hiring to integrations.

Join us as Adam takes us on a journey from a unique product conception to rapid growth, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and capitalizing on SEO’s might in the SaaS world.

You can watch this episode on youtube here,

https://youtu.be/gs8P1amE3xI

I think if you SEO can happen pretty quickly, people think it takes six

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months, but if you have a page and people

are searching for it, and there's low

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competition, you're going to be found.

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Upendra Varma: Hello everyone.

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Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast.

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I'm your host Upendra Varma.

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And today we have Adam Stone with us.

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Adam is the founder and CEO

of a company called StartAdam.

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Hey Adam, welcome to the show.

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Adam Stone: Thank you so much.

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Appreciate it.

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Upendra Varma: So Adam, that's an

interesting company name here, right?

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So what does your product do

and why customers pay you money?

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Adam Stone: Well, it sounds for automated

data, automated management for the record,

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which happened to be the perfect name.

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So I'll happily change my name.

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It's no problem.

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Uh, what we do is we communicate,

sorry, we consolidate communication

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tools together fundamentally, right?

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So we connect Slack, Microsoft Teams,

WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, text message,

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and then we can do interesting things,

um, with, with the chat in that context.

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We can start to be.

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Bring products into the conversation,

like SAS tools that you use, CRM tools.

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Um, so each party can contextually

use the tools that they need.

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In the context of the conversation that

you're having with the other person.

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So after this call, you know, you could,

uh, we could chat together from your

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WhatsApp to my Slack account, for example,

using what we call, uh, an a link.

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So I have a dot link slash Adam stone.

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If anyone wants to connect

with me afterwards.

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Um, but yeah, we're mainly

focused on sales, customer

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success type type experiences.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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That makes a lot of sense.

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And can you talk a bit about this, right?

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So, I mean, it looks like a horizontal

platform that potentially anybody

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in the world can use it, right?

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So what's, what's the

thought process here, right?

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Why just stick to like, who

are you focusing on today?

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Is it just

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Adam Stone: Yeah, so we actually get

a lot of, uh, we get a lot of inbound

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traffic, actually, because we have

search terms like connect, uh, WhatsApp

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to Telegram, for example, and so we

get a lot of inbound, uh, and a lot

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of those are B2C, right, and we ignore

them, but there are some B2B ones

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in there, so we're a freemium model.

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In our outbound, we choose to focus

on the sales and customer success

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experience because we found that

adds the most, that we are able to

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add the most value to those teams.

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Um, because it helps you maintain a

better relationship with your customers

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or your prospects or your leads,

and then stay in touch with them

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for the life cycle of your journey.

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And then it helps the entire team because

the transcript of the conversation,

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let's say with a salesperson.

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And to a lead between WhatsApp

and their Slack account, um, that

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synchronizes to the company's CRM.

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So all of a sudden, even though

a salesperson's using WhatsApp to

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communicate, the communications still

end up in the company's own CRM.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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Right.

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And I want to understand

your customer base today.

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Right.

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So like how many paying customers do

you have on your platform as of today?

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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So I'm probably not going to talk about

how many and how much and stuff, but,

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Upendra Varma: give, give me, give

me a sense of, you know, how people

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are using your product, right?

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Who are these people?

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Right.

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So how many you have maybe on an

overall user account, whatever

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that is, right, that you're

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Adam Stone: yeah, of course.

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So we, we launched our product

about three or four months ago now.

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Um, and in that time we've had more than

3, 000 customers, sorry, 3, 000 users,

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uh, sign up, uh, on a freemium model.

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So that could give you an idea.

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So we get up to 20 a day now.

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Upendra Varma: All right.

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So like my next question, like where are

you getting all of these people from?

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Like, how did you sort of, you know,

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Right.

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So what's been working for you?

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Where are they discovering you?

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Adam Stone: have a background in SEO, so

I think that's been very helpful for us.

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We also have a product in a space

that other people just don't

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really have compelling products.

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So it's, you know, we

found a niche, I would say.

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Um.

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The other thing is we have some

innate virality in the product.

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Like if I'm talking to you, then

I brought you onto the product.

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And then maybe one out of five,

one out of 10 of people like you

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will end up using the product.

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Yourselves or themselves, uh, and so on.

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So we do have innate, I would call it

like a two to one viral coefficient.

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At least you can also create

cross platform groups, right?

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So if someone wanted to create a group

with 500 people and make it a broadcast,

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like if you want to stay in touch

with your podcast network, you could

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have, um, a link for your podcast,

um, that people can join that creates

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a cross platform group so people can

join from WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack,

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text message, whatever they like.

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And you can broadcast messages out.

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Right.

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But the good thing for us is if you

do that, and that's a paid feature.

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So we get paid for that.

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Um, you actually bring on 100 or

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Um, so,

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Upendra Varma: So can you

just try to quantify this?

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Right.

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So, I mean, uh, because it's interesting

in the sense that, okay, you've

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got this SEO background, right?

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But how have you been able to sort of,

you know, get all such customers in

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just such a short, short amount of time?

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Have you been working on lead

generation for a while now,

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because it takes time, right, to

get ranked for all of these terms.

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So what's

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Adam Stone: I think if you SEO can happen

pretty quickly, people think it takes six

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months, but if you have a page and people

are searching for it, and there's low

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competition, you're going to be found.

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For that search term,

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Upendra Varma: and can

you quantify this, right?

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So when have you been putting in,

you know, efforts to sort of like

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this SEO content and what sort of

content are we talking about here?

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Adam Stone: not necessarily content, as

you might think about it, it's more just

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having a page available on the site.

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So you need to have the foundations

for SEO, otherwise it doesn't work.

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Like Google can't just

know what you do, right?

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Just like a user can't come to

your site and know what you do.

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So I think about Google and, uh,

users in the same vein, actually.

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What's good for the users is good for us.

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Upendra Varma: Right.

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So like quantify this, just so you've

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Can you just approximately let me like

how many of them discovered through one of

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this organic, you know, SEO search, right?

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Can you just put a number there?

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Adam Stone: 90 percent of them.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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So now my question goes right.

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So all I'm understanding is right

to a couple months back, you, you

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came up with this bunch of landing

pages that users are searching for.

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And now like you've, you've like,

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like three months, like that,

that just looks too, too amazing.

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Right.

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So like, what, like what, what's,

what's the secret sauce here?

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Right.

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So what's been working here?

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Was this just, you know, what's

your keyword strategy or can

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you just talk about that?

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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I mean, so we're fortunate because

we've got a lot of different

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combinations of keywords, right?

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Connect Slack to my HubSpot account.

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You know, that would be one of them.

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Connect WhatsApp to Telegram

would be another one, right?

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And then there's the more business

oriented ones, like you could imagine.

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Connect Slack to Microsoft

Teams would be a valuable one.

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That one actually I don't think is our

highest volume and that probably is

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a little more competition, but really

the competition is nonsense because

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nobody's doing what we're doing.

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So, um, it's a difficult

problem that we've had to solve.

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It took us about a year of development

where it should have taken three months.

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Um, yeah, so I think it's a

combination of good SEO strategy

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and having a product in a niche that

is sort of not really looked at.

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I think that's the idea of SaaS, right?

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You want to have a software in

a space where you have a niche.

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And I think SEO is a really

good way of validating that.

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Upendra Varma: So essentially

connect X to Y that's, that's the

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keyword that you've been focusing

with X and Y being your variables.

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And then you've got whole bunch of, you

know, iterations and then you've just

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built landing pages for all of those.

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Right.

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And that's driving almost

all of your traffic today.

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Adam Stone: Yeah, you could say that.

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Upendra Varma: That's, that's wonderful.

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Right.

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So, and like, what's

the plan going forward?

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And just tell me, right.

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Have you managed to convert any of these,

you know, free users to page users?

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Is there a good conversion rate there?

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Adam Stone: Yeah, while we've been

on the call, someone signed up.

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Upendra Varma: So can you quantify,

are you comfortable with that?

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Adam Stone: Uh, can I,

sorry, say that again?

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Upendra Varma: for every

hundred users signing up, right?

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So how many of them are actually

ending up on your paid plan today?

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Adam Stone: Yeah, I'm probably not

going to talk too much about that.

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I'd say it's on the earlier stages, right?

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So it's not, um, happening

on a basis that I could even

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quantify that question, right?

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Um, because most of the users,

we're only rolled out billing

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about a week or two weeks ago.

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Um, we were doing outbound, right?

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And we allowed people to sign up

and we were testing things like

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we actually effed up, um, quite a

bit, which I'm happy to talk about.

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Um, killed our growth for a month by

trying to charge all of our free users.

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Um, but yeah, it's only been like

a week or two since we've actually

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had billing baked into the product.

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Upendra Varma: what else have you

been trying apart from, you know, SEO?

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So, and obviously apart from the virality

part that that's embedded in your product,

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like, is there anything that you've

been, you talked about outbound, right?

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So

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Adam Stone: Yeah, I think.

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It's, it's funny cause like you look at

the scalable channels and then you look

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at the unscalable channels and sometimes

they perform the same as each other.

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Right.

202

So in our example, I would say,

uh, SEO channel, uh, which performs

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really well from a freemium base,

but then, uh, LinkedIn, for example,

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press articles, these things that

I would call somewhat unscalable.

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Those have led to like an equal

or if not higher amount of

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revenue that's been brought in.

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than the actual, you know, SEO that's

bringing in thousands of users.

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So I think it's important to be

doing both things at the same time.

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Like you can work on scalable

things, but then you need to do

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things that don't scale as well.

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Um, engaging with your audience,

building an audience, all that stuff.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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So Adam, just, you know, go

back like six, 12 months before.

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Right.

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So how did it all start?

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Right.

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So where did you get the idea for

this product and you know, how have

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you started, you know, building the

brand and the whole thing here, right?

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So just walk us through that journey.

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Adam Stone: Yeah, it was

kind of a fun journey.

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Um, so we started building about eight.

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Uh, eight years ago, uh, under,

under Speedlancer, which was my old

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freelancing marketplace platform.

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That was the first verticalized

freelancing marketplace.

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Nobody else was doing freelancing

marketplaces at the time other

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than Upwork and Fiverr, right?

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And then there was us.

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So we got a bit of a name,

a name for ourselves.

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We had a couple of thousand customers,

um, paying, um, uh, but you know, during

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COVID, like everything sort of shifted.

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And 700 marketplaces popped up.

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Everything became really competitive.

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Um, so we were kind of at a

high, and I knew it was going

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to be a high for Speedlancer.

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So I let it actually taper

down to basically zero.

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Um, but during that time, we

were focusing on the SaaS.

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And so what we did was we took the

software that we had spent years

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building for Speedlancer, which would

connect freelancers with companies.

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via their communication tools.

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Um, it was actually specially built

for Slack to Slack before Slack had

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their own Slack Connect product.

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Uh, and in fact, we were the first Slack

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Um, which is, I guess, our claim to fame.

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But that, it became StartAtom,

which actually started as a

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project management tool, and then

we focused on, on sales piece.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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And that's how it started.

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Right.

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And like, so what was, what

was the goal on day one?

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Right.

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Was it always about, you know, just using

SEO and, you know, virality or what else

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are you planning going forward here?

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Adam Stone: No, it was terrifying.

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I, um, spoke to a couple of investors.

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I told them we weren't really raising.

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We didn't even have a product yet.

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Um, I sort of wanted their thoughts.

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We ended up closing around accidentally

pre product and everything.

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Uh, I think we had, you know,

we have a really good team.

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My CTO is a, uh, an ex

AI professor of 35 years.

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So, um, got an amazing team, but

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Upendra Varma: how big of a

team are we talking about today?

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Adam Stone: uh, right

now it's about six of us.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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So we're pretty lean, but.

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Lean and mean, but, um, we, we came, we,

we, at that time before we had a product,

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I mean, we didn't have a product, right?

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So we definitely didn't have

a go to market strategy.

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Um, I remember telling someone at

like a party, like what I'm, what

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I'm working on, what I'm doing.

272

And they're like, they're asking me

what's your go to market strategy.

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And I'm like, it'll unfold.

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You never know.

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You don't know what

channels are going to work.

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Right.

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So you just have to try things.

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And all of a sudden SEO was taking off

with Speedlancer SEO did not take off.

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And I thought it would take off.

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Right.

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Like for Fiverr, it took off for us.

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It didn't, uh, for my e commerce

business, uh, SEO was the main, um,

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was the main way of us getting traffic.

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So there's no rhyme or reason about it.

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I didn't think that we get any traction

on LinkedIn just by posting, but look, I

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think people resonate with the concept.

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People resonate instantly with the

frustration of too many communication

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tools, and so it's about finding the B2B

use case for that and then going for that.

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Upendra Varma: So Adam, I can't

see a pricing page on your, you

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know, on your homepage there.

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Right.

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So like, was it

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Adam Stone: is one.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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I couldn't, I tried from my place

and be, I'll just try it again.

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Right.

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So I, I thought like there's this talk

to sales being that, you know, main CTA.

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Right.

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I thought it would be, you know,

enterprising deals that you were

300

trying to push from day one.

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Is that what you're looking at?

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Adam Stone: Uh, we're kind of

doing a two fold strategy, right?

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We're accepting whatever inbound leads

we get, inbound customers we get, and

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then we have the outbound strategy as

well, which is more enterprise focused.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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So yeah, what's, what's, what's

going to happen in the future, right?

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So now what, what are you investing

your time and efforts going forward?

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Right.

309

So are you going to scale

your outbound team or what,

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what's, what's going to happen?

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Just.

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What

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Adam Stone: Yeah, we're hopefully

about to hire our first, like, head

314

of sales to go after enterprise.

315

Um, meanwhile, we have a bunch of

enterprise leads that we're going after.

316

So I'm hoping those will close and

we'll be in a really good position by

317

the time that's done, um, just closed

out next funding round, which is great.

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Upendra Varma: And then have

you managed to sort of close

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any enterprise deals so far?

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I mean, is it

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Adam Stone: Yeah, we have.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

323

And just talk about

the sales cycle, right?

324

So how big of a deals

are we talking about?

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Is it a 100, 10, 000 deal?

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Like what's that sweet

spot look like today?

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Adam Stone: Yeah.

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Right now.

329

They're like five figure.

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Um, and I think we've got a

few more of those that will

331

probably be five figure deals.

332

Um, six figure deals.

333

We've had a few leads that

haven't, um, haven't closed them or

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Upendra Varma: And then, and like,

so just pick, like, I just want to

335

understand the motion here, right?

336

So for majority of these enterprise

deals that you're trying to close.

337

Are they inbound?

338

Are they, you know, these outbound leads

that you've sort of managed to reach

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Adam Stone: bit of both, you could

call them like channel partnerships or

340

inbound, a mix of both of those things.

341

Uh, and then we've had some come, you

know, fully inbound through SEO and such.

342

Um,

343

Upendra Varma: and like, what

does the sales cycle look like?

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Because I'm asking you

specifically, right?

345

Because this, this does look like

a novel product, you know, that's,

346

that's not, you know, it's not a

replacement of anything, right?

347

It's more like something, a

newer way of doing things, right?

348

So, I mean, it's not easy to

sell something like that, right?

349

That they're going to be a lot of,

you know, questions, all of it, right?

350

So like, how does the

sales cycle look like?

351

Are, are your customers comfortable, you

know, accepting, you know, your product?

352

What's happening when you go

into those sales conversations?

353

You just give us a sense of that.

354

Adam Stone: no, I mean, they're

pretty positive and fast moving.

355

I mean, we had someone sign up within

a day and someone pay us annually

356

upfront, you know, for Multiple users

and then upgrade two months later

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and pass annually for those upgrades

and pay four times as much as they

358

had been, um, today we've got a I.

359

T.

360

approval process starting for a

lead that we spoke to a week ago.

361

So they're pretty quick.

362

I think I don't know if I agree with

your assumption that because it's

363

a new product, it takes a while.

364

Like, I think,

365

Upendra Varma: So, okay.

366

My question was a bit different, right?

367

So in terms of competitive

landscape, right?

368

So are you positioning yourself against

any, you know, existing competitors?

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Do you have any of those?

370

Adam Stone: um, I'm definitely

not positioning ourselves,

371

ourselves against, um, competitors.

372

Right.

373

If they come up in a conversation,

it's like people focus so much

374

on competition, but as far as I'm

concerned, nothing's competition

375

until my customer says it to me.

376

Right.

377

If they go, Oh, why would I

use you instead of so and so?

378

And I can't answer the question,

then that's, then that's

379

the true competitor, right?

380

If someone exists in a, in a very

fringe market or requires a lot of

381

integration, or they haven't spoken

to the customer that we spoken

382

to, then there's no competition.

383

And I'm certainly not about to tell

the customer about any competition.

384

Um, although I'm not aware of

any competition that would, uh,

385

that I would need to disclose.

386

But, um, yeah, does that

answer the question?

387

Upendra Varma: Yeah, in a way it does.

388

Right.

389

And can Zapier do all of these that

you mentioned or, you know, are you

390

doing something way more than that?

391

Adam Stone: Yeah, no, we,

we integrate with Zapier.

392

Um, it really has very

little to do with us.

393

Zapier doesn't do cross

platform communication.

394

Um, we do.

395

Right.

396

So you could maybe send a single

message from one platform, maybe to

397

another platform, but still you need

to onboard the other user, right?

398

So if I want to talk to you and I'm

going to make you give me your API key.

399

Uh, I think you're just

going to prefer email.

400

So there's a lot of work that goes

into, uh, making the experience

401

really as magical as it can be.

402

Upendra Varma: Got it.

403

All right, Adam, thanks for

taking the time to talk to me.

404

Hope you scale your company

to much, much greater heights.

405

Adam Stone: No, I appreciate it.

406

Thank you.