Getting acquired twice in a span of two years

Alex Heiden's first-ever business, Closify, was a slam dunk, leading to an acquisition. After the exit, he started two more profitable businesses, became an influencer, and got acqui-hired.

Here's Alex on how he did it. 👇

A history of successful businesses

I started my career in remote sales before building Closify, a hiring platform that focuses solely on hiring commission-only sales reps.

I started Closify in January of 2021 and went on to make over $1M in revenue, with $125k being our biggest month back in May of 2022. I exited the majority of the company in March of 2023 for an amount that I cannot share.

After Closify, I grew from 0 to 100,000 followers on Instagram in 95 days (nocode.alex) and ran a no-code development agency that made $30-100k per month from June of 2023 up until August of 2024.

Then, in Q4 of 2024, I began working on Payd, which launched in February of 2025 and reached a 6-figure run rate by March. I was then acqui-hired by Whop, where I now work.

I am looking into building my next project on the side, but I haven't landed on anything yet.

Avoiding the traditional route

I got into entrepreneurship because I wanted to avoid the traditional route. I didn't want to follow the path of my dad and brother, so I was simply looking to get out of that.

I started Payd because it solved two problems that I faced on both sides of the equation. From the business-owner side, hiring creators and influencers — they always ask for too much money up front. On the creator side, it's hard to find good businesses worth promoting.

So, I built Payd, which allowed businesses to set a campaign budget, set a CPM (how much they'll pay per 1,000 views), and post guidelines. Then, creators connected their social accounts to Payd and began posting.

I was passionate about this because I was helping everyday people make side income. I got to leverage my network, brand, and years of expertise to help others make money, and that was a cool feeling.

Choose the right market

Only build in markets where you're early and you have an edge. With both Closify and Payd, I was extremely early, and so I was able to become "the go-to" solution very quickly.

To do that, I looked at the existing solutions for Closify. It was really all sales recruiters, which were slow, expensive, and inefficient. Then, I mapped out the inefficiencies and realized I could be the first to solve them.

With Payd, I saw what TikTok Shop did to e-commerce when it came out. E-commerce changed overnight. Why would you not focus on a channel that pays on results? I knew something similar needed to exist for SaaS companies, apps, and personal brands, but no one had built it.

Building: Then and now

When I was first getting started on Closify, I didn't have much money. I was still in college, so I scraped together the MVP using Airtable for the backend, Stacker for the frontend, Memberstack + Stripe for memberships and payments, and Zapier to tie everything together. The next iteration was built on Webflow with a custom CMS before I scraped together $6,000 to hire a Bubble dev to build it on Bubble, which we stayed on the entire time — Closify still runs on Bubble to this day.

But for Payd I paid a development team up front to build it, as I had capital from prior years in business.

These days, I vibe code fun side projects using createanything.com. Sometimes, I'll have my partner build stuff, as he is self-taught with Cursor.

Find the right business model

For Closify, we started by charging $5k/yr, and we grew by expanding our sales team aggressively. Eventually, we switched to a $1k - $2k per hire fee so the pricing would scale with the size of the business we were selling to.

For Payd, we charged $500/mo + a 20% take rate on the brand's budget, so if they spent $2k, we made $500/mo + $400.

Outbound + content + ads

I grew Closify with SEO. If you search "hire commission only sales reps," we're still the #2 organic result. To this day, we still get 3,000 clicks a month from Google on autopilot. Beyond that, we had a sales team of 5 SDRs doing cold email, LinkedIn outbound, and cold calling, plus 2-3 closers and a sales manager.

For LInkedIn outbound, we'd all have a Closify banner and our headline would say, "We've staffed 200+ sales teams in the last 12 months," and then we'd send the max connection request limit each day to agency owners with 11-50 employees. When they accepted, we'd say:

"Hey {name}

insert personalized first line

quick question, is {business name} looking for commission-only sales reps?"

Payd was a combination of tactics. We used TikTok UGC + spark ads to attract creators. And we used my personal brand + direct outreach + referrals to get brands on board.

So, I've grown two businesses in entirely different ways, and what I can confidently say is this: Outbound sales is a superpower everyone should learn. And content and ads are superpowers too.

You have to do it all. That's what differentiates you. Too many people can only do content, but they don't know a thing about setting up a cold email campaign.

Your routine will save you

It's easy to get complacent and coast for a few months. Your results today are a result of your last 2-3 months of work, sometimes longer, so that wall may not hit you for a bit. But when it does, it'll take you another 3-6 months to get it back.

That happened with Closify. I got too comfortable and it killed momentum.

I forced myself to go back to having a strict daily routine:

• Wake up at the same time every day

• A minimum of four hours of deep work

• Talk to customers

• Then go to the gym and spend time with good people

That got me back on track. Honestly, that routine always gets me back on track.

In the process of building Payd, I was coming off of probably the worst 6-9 months of my life. I paid quarterly tax, got a fraudulent chargeback on a dev agency deal, then Stripe held $40k for 6 months, and then I got sued over something incredibly stupid.

It was the first time I experienced true anxiety. I'd fall asleep and get sleep paralysis. I'd wake up with a knot of anxiety in my chest. I had shut down my dev agency, and I knew the only way to pull myself out of this was routine and help from God.

Keep your promises to yourself. Show up EVERY day. Stop hitting snooze. Stop lying to yourself about going to the gym. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It doesn't need to be a crazy routine. I didn't do ice baths, I didn't wake up at 5 AM. I just stuck to one routine and kept my promises to myself.

Get obsessed and learn sales

Obsess over your customers. Never stop building for your customers. And never build something unless multiple customers request it.

On top of that, as a founder, you're a salesman. Get really good at selling. Sales solve all problems. If you can't go out and sling cold DMs, emails, and cold calls to get customers, you'll be beaten by the founder who can sell like crazy.

What's next?

I just want to be great in all aspects of life. I want to build cool products that help people. I want to be elite athletically and physically. I want to elevate people around me.

My goals are not revenue goals anymore, but just trying to be the highest version of myself possible.

You can follow along on Instagram, where I share educational videos on how to start a SaaS. I'm also on X and YouTube.