Hitting a 7-figure ARR after one failure and one exit

After one failure, Vedran Rasic built his second SaaS and exited successfully. Then, with the momentum of that success, he built LeadDelta.

Three years later, it's about to cross a seven-figure ARR — and it's competing with companies that took millions in funding.

Here's Vedran on how he did it. 👇

From first computer to 7-figure ARR

My family lost all their savings in a bank crash in post-war Yugoslavia. Ten years later, all they recovered was 600 EUR — just enough for my first computer.

I've been building ventures since my early twenties. I started selling for a student organization at university because no one else would. One of our corporate partners needed someone to manage their digital assets, so I offered to run it. Next thing I knew, I'd hired my roommates and we were off.

Later, I helped run a digital studio building products for others, which introduced me to SaaS. In 2017, I moved to Canada to help launch MyShop, which didn't work out. In 2018, we launched Autoklose, which did well and got acquired in 2020. That impacted me in a major way. It allowed me to buy my first home, settle (but just for a bit), build up some basic savings, and go bigger and bolder next time.

Now, I live in San Francisco and I'm working on LeadDelta, which launched in 2022. We're close to 7-figure ARR. Tiny and profitable.

Finding the idea

The idea for LeadDelta had been in my head since 2017 — it was a no-brainer.

I kept thinking: How do we level the playing field when everything comes down to contacts and who-knows-who? Why not help power networkers sync their contacts into one hub and provide intelligence on top of it? And why stop there... Why not help companies do the same and grow from warm intros instead of cold spam?

Whether you're fundraising, selling, or marketing — you go back to your network. That's where you start.

I had the know-how from my previous exit, a team that wanted to build with me, investors willing to help de-risk, and plenty of ideas.

Starting small

Coming off my previous startup success, I knew I needed to de-risk fast. Unless I'm splitting the atom, there's no reason to raise big money or build for months — just release as soon as possible. This was before the AI hype.

We acquired a tiny product for a few thousand dollars, spent a month refactoring and building it to our liking. One month later, I had 500+ people subscribed to my landing page and a product ready for public testing.

It was a simple contact manager for LinkedIn. One table. Tags and notes. That's it. And people loved it.

While everyone else automated and scraped, we positioned ourselves as the manager of their connections. People gave us a chance, left great reviews, and it grew from there.

Tech and tool stacks

We're a tiny, profitable team of 9, fully remote. I split my teams into Sellers and Builders, so I'll share the tools we use accordingly. We use dozens of tools, but here are the main ones:

Communication & Ops:

• Slack

• Google Workspace

Sales:

• LeadDelta – brings our networks together, prospects, engages, and enriches

• HubSpot – deal management

• Loops – marketing and transactional emails

• Screenstudio, Loom – videos

• ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude – ops and agents

Product:

• Cursor

• MongoDB

• Linear

• Figma

And the product tech stack is MongoDB, GCP, and React/Node.

Organic growth at each stage

Here's how we grew.

0-10K users: I started with my own network. I used LeadDelta to message everyone about the launch. My network provided the first users; we then asked those who enjoyed the product to leave reviews and write posts with use cases. Excellent strategy.

We optimized SEO from day one. Then, we built a community around me and the product, supported by networks like AppSumo, Product Hunt, and Indie Hackers.

10-20K users: We shipped and launched new features every week, building momentum. We then became Product of the Day three times in a row, and soon after, Product of the Year in January 2023, alongside ChatGPT, Miro, Canva, and other unicorns. That opened many doors.

20-35K users: We doubled down on content, SEO, and partnerships. We generated great organic traffic and formed partnerships to foster growth. We have approximately 500-600 affiliates, but only 10-50 generate substantial income and significantly contribute to our growth.

What worked for us (in no particular order):

• Product Hunt: Three times Product of the Day, Product of the Year. Huge community support

• LinkedIn: Strong network engagement, posting, engaging with content using our custom feeds, messaging, and tagging to build audiences.

• Cold email: We've experimented with multiple approaches. We treat it like display ads — it yields much cheaper impressions. We don't pretend to know what people need at any particular moment. We just appear occasionally, saying, "Hey, we're here, here's what we built."

• Shipping weekly: People know we continuously invest in the product. It's not just a cash cow; I ensure it remains high quality and improves.

• Partnerships: We engage in different programs and sponsor events. Now that I'm in San Francisco, we pursue more of these.

• Chrome Web Store: We have solid positioning on the Chrome Web Store.

Currently, we focus less on hype and more on strategic outreach. The next level of growth will come from doubling down on what works and, potentially, building supportive products for specific niches.

Leveraging a B2C2B model

Our model is B2C2B with a free, no-credit-card 7-day trial.

We start by selling to individuals, who then help us sell to their teams — we aim to win the company this way. This is a challenging approach, even though it became attractive around 2019. We have executed it with enough levers to make it work.

Our pricing is straightforward: Start with a starter plan, expand features, and add credits as you upgrade plans. You can invite team members or community members to join your workspace, share your network, and buy additional enrichment credits to find email and phone numbers.

And we now have specific add-ons. We aim to be the best LinkedIn product — when you need LinkedIn enrichment and data discovery, you come to LeadDelta. We do this safely without compromising your account. So you can enrich data, search through 500M people and 40M companies, find the best business emails, personal emails, and personal phone numbers, based on a LinkedIn profile URL.

Find your pricing sweet spot

Change pricing often. I change pricing every three to six months.

If you're building a product for everyone, you're building a proof of concept with various audiences. Run pricing tests. Ask what's too little, what's too much, what's fair. Do the math. Figure out what to charge, and then continuously experiment.

If you're building for a particular group, it's even easier. Test different pricing — maybe even 10X or 100X compared to your original plans.

Recently, we 3x-ed our pricing. Still, some people get on a call and say, "This is cheap."

The challenges facing solo founders

Here are my main challenges:

• Being a solo non-technical founder

• Managing too many moving parts in the tech stack

• Building on the wrong infrastructure initially

• Networks that don't want you

• Competition from every direction, hiring fast, and companies that raised $20M, $30M, and even $68M competing with us

This isn't easy. If I could start over, I'd be more grounded in reality, rather than acting like a superhero who can solve every problem.

You cannot always bend reality. I was completely out of my mind to think I could challenge extremely expensive data problems with $500K or $800K in funding. But, in the end, I guess it worked out! Those companies that raised millions are at the same revenue level as us.

Start lean and build a good life

Here's my advice:

• Start lean, start ASAP.

• Build and distribute great products and services. It's very simple. Everything else — even fundraising and attending conferences — wastes time and money. Focus on building and talking to your customers. If you have too many customers, niche down.

• Don't trust people who say reputation is nothing. This idea seems popular now, but it isn't true.

• Clearly define what you want to accomplish. Instead of a moving target, set a SMART one (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). If your goal is to make money, be clear about it. If your goal is to be a celebrity founder, be clear about it. Whatever your goal, be clear, then focus on making it happen. Once you achieve it, set a new one.

• Keep two things in your mind: "Am I building?" And "Am I selling?" As Elon Musk would say: "What did you get done this week?"

• Don't forget to live a good life. Making great products is part of that — but it isn't everything.

What's next?

For LeadDelta, I've been excited about AI before it became a buzzword. Now I am focused on transforming LeadDeltainto a product that provides real-time intelligence for professional networks.

My full focus is on the product. We aim to continue growing 100% year over year while remaining profitable.

Other than that, I want to play long-term games with long-term people. I moved to San Francisco to achieve that.

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