Hitting a 7-figure ARR by building a community into his product
Taylor Jacobson had a problem that he wanted to solve for years. Then, he came up with a solution, went all in, and built a community around it. Now, Focusmate is bringing in a 7-figure ARR.
Here's Taylor on how he did it. 👇
Going all in on an idea
I'm Taylor Jacobson, founder and CEO of Focusmate. I spent most of my 20s trying out different entrepreneurial ideas, and right before Focusmate, I was working as a life coach and running a men's support group.
It was late 2015, and one of the guys, Jake, was struggling. He had a major investor deck to write, but couldn't bring himself to write it.
I'd always fantasized about someone sitting with me while I worked. In school, you can get a study buddy; problem solved. In the work world, asking someone to keep you company that way would be weird. I knew I needed it, but I was always too ashamed to ask.
But now, because it was his problem and not mine, I finally suggested: Let's get on a video call and keep each other company while we work. It wasn't about my shame anymore; it was about helping him.
We got on the call and worked for two hours. It was like magic. At the end, we were like, "Okay, let's do this again tomorrow." We met almost every day that week.
Within 24 hours of that first session, I thought, "This is a business. What if you had a network and could find someone to work with anytime?" I'd had enough failed projects by that point to recognize a good idea from a mediocre one. I sat with the idea for six months, and then a friend said something I'll never forget: "The way you talk about this, I think you'll regret it if you don't do it."
That was it. I went all in. Now, we have a 7-figure ARR.
An accessible model
Focusmate is a virtual coworking community that helps people get their best work done.
The way it works is simple: You book a session, get matched with an accountability partner, and hop on a video call together. You each share what you're working on in the first minute, then you mute your mics and work quietly side-by-side. At the end, a bell goes off and you check in with each other on how it went. It sounds like a simple idea. But for a lot of people, it’s the only thing that’s ever worked.
We launched Focusmate for free because we thought we needed enough people on the platform for the matching to work. That culture of “let's just give it away” became ingrained in us. When we monetized, we started at $5 a month, and people tell us all the time that Focusmate is worth $200 a month or more to them.
Entrepreneurs commonly have some insecurity around charging for what they offer, and we definitely went too low. If I were starting over, I'd start at a higher price point.
Now, we operate on a subscription model. It's $12 a month, or $96 a year. We also offer three free sessions per week, allowing anyone to use Focusmate at no cost. Accessibility is a cultural value for the team. One of our internal slogans is that we're building the most supportive community on earth. Part of this means ensuring people can participate regardless of what they can pay.
We have members in every country in the world, and we've hosted over 13 million sessions. Seven of our members have logged over 10,000 hours on the platform, which is over 400 days. One pair of members (from India and Spain) has had over 5,000 sessions together.
Starting simple
The first version of Focusmate was a Facebook group. There was no stack. You'd post, "Hey, I want to work at this time. Does anyone want to work with me?" If someone was in, they'd comment with their Skype handle.
I called the group "Procrastination Blasters" because I couldn't think of a better name.
Then, I built a WordPress site and used Zapier to glue everything together:
ScheduleOnce for booking
Google Sheets as my database
Zapier connected it all to Google Calendar, Gmail, and other services.
This was long before AI and Claude Code, and I didn't want to learn how to code, so I duct-taped it together until I found a technical cofounder.
Mike joined in October 2016, and we shipped the first real version of Focusmate that November. The stack has evolved a lot since then. Today, around 20 different tools power Focusmate.
Word of mouth
Most of our growth has been driven by word of mouth. Early on, I deliberately used guerrilla marketing on Facebook and Reddit, which attracted the first 300 users. After that, it took off on its own.
Instead of me talking about Focusmate on Reddit, other users did it for me. Someone would post about struggling with focus, and a Focusmate member would jump in and say, "Have you tried Focusmate?"
Press coverage worked the same way. In the first year, I received a few small mentions through HARO, but nothing serious. Every meaningful piece of coverage since has come from a reporter who was already a Focusmate user or knew someone who was.
This works for us because Focusmate is genuinely hard to explain. You can't explain in 30 seconds why being on a video call with a stranger makes you more productive. It involves behavioral and evolutionary psychology and other concepts that don't fit into a single sentence, so people must experience it to understand it. And once they do, they want to tell someone about it.
Building community into the product
Our biggest advantage is that community is built into the product itself. Focusmate isn't just a tool people use; it's a place people feel like they belong to. Hiring is the best example. When you're hiring from a community, you have people who already know who you are and what you're doing.
If you can build community into your business in some form, you should. It's a huge advantage for brand, for loyalty, for hiring, for when you screw up and need a bit of grace from your users. People give you that grace when they feel like they're part of what you’re building.
Learning to rely on his team
Committing to building Focusmate made everything feel fun. Sure, annoying things like global sales tax compliance have occurred, but that’s pretty usual for a global small business.
The biggest challenge, by far, was personal. My health took a major downturn in 2020, to the point where I wasn't working. Figuring out how to run a business on 10% of my previous capacity was the hardest thing I've ever done. And it actually became a huge advantage.
Before I got sick, I had my fingers in everything, and I liked it that way. I didn't realize that while I might be the best on the team at one or two things, I'm definitely not the best at everything. Someone on the team is better than me at almost everything that needs to get done.
Founders tend to overestimate their own abilities, and that's useful early because otherwise, no one would ever start anything. But at some point, you have to make the transition to believing in other people.
So, I stopped trying to be everywhere at once and tell the team exactly what I needed from them.
This brought much clarity. Operating at 10% capacity made the business operationally healthier. We documented everything and became more structured — and we still benefit from that today.
Do validation the right way
Entrepreneurs still make the same mistake they always have: confirmation bias. You like your idea, so you skip the steps to determine its true value, position it, and solve a real problem.
Many founders want to survey their beta users. Surveys ask things like "Which of these features do you find valuable?" and, "How much would you pay, X, Y, or Z?" People commonly think users will tell them what's valuable and what they'll pay. That's not true. Science proves people don't tell you the truth, not because they don't want to, but because they don't know.
Instead of asking, “Do you want this?”, have them discuss their problem using open-ended questions. "What have you tried so far?" "How did it go?" "How much did you spend on it?" You uncover their actual behavior, not what they think they’d do, and what they’re already spending. That’s your first real data point.
Then, when you present offers, you must get them to pay. Because the only real signal that people want what you've made is when they give you money, not just when they say they would.
I had to screw this up enough times to really get it through my head.
What's next?
For 2026, it's all about cash flow and profitability, because it unlocks opportunities for us. We want to bet on a few growth channels, and each needs full-time resources and a budget for serious experiments.
Our longer-term vision is to make Focusmate a suite of products. No matter your situation, even if you're at the bottom of the well, Focusmate offers an interaction that helps you take one positive next step.
I want our members to feel: "It doesn't matter where I'm starting from today; I can bootstrap my way to building momentum and having a great, productive day."
You can follow along on LinkedIn and X. And check out Focusmate!
Leave a Comment
the quietest line in this whole post is "the first version of focusmate was a facebook group."
everyone reads that as a scrappy mvp story. the real lesson is the order. focusmate didn't build a product and add community, you built a community and a product fell out of it. those two sequences look similar from the outside but play out completely differently. products-plus-community have to manufacture belonging. communities-that-become-products have belonging already baked in, and that's why taylor's retention looks the way it does.
i'm on the community-first side of this right now with unsponsored.io, a small private group for people doing real work without the network that usually gets them seen. no product yet, just people and rules. the temptation to "add features" comes up constantly and this post is a good reminder that the right move is to let the community tell you what wants to exist.
great piece, james. and taylor, the fb group-to-7-figure path is the part i'd want a full second interview on.
simple idea, but real problem behind it - that’s why it works
building around behavior instead of features is the key
Love the origin story. It’s a perfect example of how a 'duct-tape' version of a product can often provide more clarity than a polished MVP. Sometimes we over-engineer before we even truly understand the magic of the interaction. Great journey!
Love the idea, I will sign up to see if I can find fellow single saas builders to see how they manage the work and processes they follow.
The validation advice hits hard — "the only real signal is when they pay, not when they say they will." But Focusmate launched free and stayed there for a while because you needed liquidity for matching to work. Reads like a contradiction on the surface. Was there a moment where you had to make peace with skipping traditional validation in favor of network effects? Or did you have another proof point for willingness to pay before the $5 flip?
Hi new here I have a good project for my country looking angel investor
The part most people will skim is the detail that matters most: the whole thing was validated in a single 2-hour call with Jake. Not a survey, not a waitlist, not a landing page. One session where the behavior worked.
That's the asymmetry I keep coming back to as a solo founder — the fastest validation is almost never "do people want this", it's "does the core behavior produce the outcome the first time someone does it". If yes, distribution becomes a repetition problem. If no, nothing downstream saves you.
The other thread I found more interesting than the community one: operating at 10% capacity in 2020 made the business operationally healthier. That's the quiet lesson for anyone reading this at €0 MRR — the founder bottleneck shows up way before the growth stage, you just can't see it until something forces you out.
One question for Taylor if you're still replying: when the accountability loop breaks (you mentioned churn usually happens quietly there), did you ever try to intervene product-side, or did you decide the break is actually signal that the user didn't have the underlying behavior yet? Curious whether you treat it as a retention bug or a qualification filter.
— Giuseppe, building AgileTask.ai
Community-as-product is the quietest 7-figure pattern.Repos that embed community (forums, bots, onboarding flows) inside the product show lower churn than those linking out to Slack or Circle. Integrated beats adjacent every time. What was the first community feature that actually moved retention?
What's the one thing you'd tell a founder building a behavioral product, something where the mechanic IS the value?
This is a really interesting angle — building the community into the product instead of around it.
I feel like a lot of products try to add “community” later as a feature, but here it sounds like it’s part of the core value from day one.
Curious — was there a specific moment where you noticed that the community aspect was actually driving growth/retention more than the product itself?
Also wondering how you approached onboarding early on — did users immediately understand the value of the community, or did that take iteration?
To some extent I didn't do anything, the community just existed due to the nature of the product. But having a FB group aided this dramatically. I don't think one works without the other though. If your product lends itself to something like this, it's great because you can be in dialogue with users in a more natural way, like gathering around a table to discuss. More scalable and human feeling. Early onboarding can also happen through this forum btw, just posting and commenting in a group, although I did a lot of emailing and DMing with people also.
That makes a lot of sense actually — especially the part about the FB group amplifying what was already there. I like the idea of onboarding happening through conversation instead of just UI. Feels way more natural than forcing users through flows. Out of curiosity — did you notice any difference in retention between users who engaged in the community early vs those who didn’t?
Feels like that might be the real leverage point here.
I didn't track that at all, was too focused on shoveling coal i.e. just getting the next thing done. But the direct interactions were positive enough that I didn't feel like it mattered too much: I knew there were excited, engaged users who were willing to pay, and at that stage there was far more basic stuff that needed to get done regardless of whether there were different user archetypes anyway.
That makes sense — especially early on when you're just trying to get something off the ground. What you said about seeing “engaged users willing to pay” is interesting though — feels like you were already picking up on the right signals, just not formalizing them.
I’ve seen a few products where that kind of early community engagement later turns into very different user paths (power users vs passive ones), and it ends up affecting how you design onboarding / retention loops. Did you ever reach a point where that difference became more visible, or did it stay pretty uniform?
This is a powerful reminder that some of the best ideas come from lived problems, not brainstorm sessions.
The insight that stood out most: you didn’t start with a product—you started with a behavior that already worked. That first 2-hour session was the real validation.
Also, the point about validation is gold. People say a lot, but behavior (and especially willingness to pay) tells the truth. Too many founders skip that step.
And building community into the product—not just around it—is such a durable advantage. It’s why word of mouth feels natural instead of forced.
Simple idea, executed with depth and patience. That’s what makes it hard to copy.
Yes - IMO people underestimate the value of the "depth and patience" part because they think too much about scale versus simply having any successful product/business. And also yes to building around lived problems. Personally, I'm just not smart enough to do it any other way.
Such a good reminder that simple ideas win when they solve a real problem. The Facebook group MVP is wild — most people would overbuild this from day one. Also interesting how the real moat became community, not the product itself.
You nailed it. High-friction MVPs, such as using a Facebook group in this case, are IMO a decent alternative form of demand validation. Now with AI coding the temptation to over-build early is even more dangerous.
The real insight isn’t “community,” it’s that the accountability loop (booking > session > check-in) is the product, not a layer on top.
Curious how defensible that is long-term, does the moat come from network density, or just habit formation once users cross a certain session threshold?
Important question, agreed. Probably more defensibility from community (connection to specific people) and brand at this point. Network density is a nice idea but requires a LOT of scale.
That framing makes sense - the loop itself is the product. What’s interesting though is what happens when the loop breaks. In a lot of cases, it’s not a big drop - someone just skips one session, and that’s often enough to fall out of the rhythm entirely.
Feels like most of the value is inside the loop, but most of the loss happens right at that break point.
This has been our experience as well.
The ''start simple'', and ''build around existing behavior'' points are really strong.
One thing that stands out though is that even when you get that part right, the real drop often happens later - when someone stops following through on their own. It’s not obvious in the moment, but a single miss is often enough to break the rhythm, and nothing really catches it there.
Feels like most products support the behavior,but don’t handle that break when it happens.
why did you copy my comment?
Hi new here I have a good project for my country looking angel investor
The idea here is great but the demo needs to be more compact and the front page needs more impact. When I hit the front page it should let me get started in one click, not "Join" - there's too much of an initial barrier as a user who is just browsing to join anything. I don't have time for that. Secondly how about a visual on using your product? It's a 3 minute video which could really be condensed into an animated GIF or an infographic, something like 1 Find 2 Focus 3 Finish, that's the first thing I should see and feel how it works. 3 minute video can be used later on for a more detailed breakdown. It's too heavy as a starting point.
good feedback, thank you!!
Really cool business. How do you make the economics work on the 3 sessions for free tier?
Think of it as lead gen for paid!
The ''start simple'', and ''build around existing behavior'' points are really strong.
One thing that stands out though is that even when you get that part right, the real drop often happens later - when someone stops following through on their own. It’s not obvious in the moment, but a single miss is often enough to break the rhythm, and nothing really catches it there.
Feels like most products support the behavior, but don’t handle that break when it happens.
Very true, and also, a much harder problem to solve! But crucially important to do whatever is possible to solve it anyway, because so much user + business value lives there.
That’s exactly the interesting part - it’s hard because it happens so quietly. It’s usually not a big drop, just one missed action that feels insignificant in the moment. But that’s often where the entire loop breaks.
I actually built something similar but focused on detecting hidden financial leaks (subscriptions, fees, even crypto wallets).
Thinking of selling the full system — curious if this is something founders here would be interested in.
Hi new here I have a good project for my country looking angel investor
The line that stuck with me was "the product is hard to explain, so only users who've felt it can sell it." that reframes word of mouth from a lucky outcome into a design constraint. if your product can be explained in one tweet, word of mouth is probably not going to be your primary channel and you're forced into paid or content.
What I'd love to hear more about is the 0 to 300 step. most solo founders get stuck there, not at the community-driven stage. guerrilla on facebook and reddit covers a lot of ground - was it specific subreddits, specific framings of the post, or just persistent presence over months?
In a way it was all of the above. I would find relevant FB groups and subreddits, then understanding the culture and respecting it in my approach. Sometimes that meant building a relationship via DM with the FB group owner, until they were on board with me posting something. With Reddit, you have to really understand the way each sub works in order to participate. I didn't always get that right but ultimately found a few subs where I was active in posting content, making comments, and responding to comments.
Great story! Would you elaborate more about guerrilla marketing ? It would be really helpful for someone like me who just launched 2 websites but having time with marketing on an almost non-existing budget. Thank you for the article.
I'm copy-pasting a previous comment reply here: I would find relevant FB groups and subreddits, then understanding the culture and respecting it in my approach. Sometimes that meant building a relationship via DM with the FB group owner, until they were on board with me posting something. With Reddit, you have to really understand the way each sub works in order to participate. I didn't always get that right but ultimately found a few subs where I was active in posting content, making comments, and responding to comments.
The validation idea you described is something I wish I’d seen earlier. The questions literally turn your competition into your users if you get it right.
I have a question: Any hints at which bets you’re placing? Paid acquisition always feels tricky for a product that’s 'hard to explain.'
Not paid acquisition, although we will allocate some budget as part of a broader multi-channel campaign to be more visible and top of mind with our target audience.
I agree, this distinction is very easy to overlook and critical. ~
It is very easy to build a thing people use by leveraging existing behavior rather than creating it. Otherwise you spend too much guessing and overcorrect with features.
The "start simple" observation was also huge. I've seen people get stuck trying to build a thing that looks finished rather than one that is usable. In that gap, momentum dies.
Not building the thing is clearly the more difficult skill, which usually boils down to seeing what people are already doing (over and over), and completely ignoring everything else, even if it seems really attractive from a design perspective.
In that situation, my impulse would be to stick to obvious patterns: watch people continue to return to something, and build it easier, postponing anything else not directly helping.
I feel like most of the edge is found in recognizing where the value already exists, not trying to invent it.
Hi new here I have a good project for my country looking angel investor
Exactly this. We often get feedback that people love how simple our product is. Our goal has largely been to just make a simple behavior easier and easier, better and better.
Good journey
building community INTO the product - that's the distribution move most people miss
The de validation point hit hard, most people pitch before they've talked to 10 real customers. The community first angle makes sense, but I'm curious: at what point did the community start driving revenue rather than just engagement?
I'm not sure how to make a real distinction there! But I don't think it matters. People value being part of something. Belonging is such a fundamental human drive that, when paired with solving any other problem (procrastination in our case), I think you just have to take it on faith that it drives your metrics.
Good journey
This comment was deleted 2 days ago