Hitting a $5M+ ARR and selling for $35M

Noah Tucker worked in e-commerce until he built the solution to his biggest pain point. Now, Social Snowball is bringing in a high-seven-figure ARR.

Here's Noah on how he did it. 👇

Finding the problem

I worked in e-commerce and used plenty of influencer and affiliate tools. Most were very outdated, and none had the functionality I was looking for. After years of frustration, I decided to build my own.

And that became Social Snowball, a B2B SaaS platform that helps e-commerce brands manage and grow their creator and affiliate partnerships.

We are currently between $5M and $10M ARR, and Dotdigital Group acquired us over the summer for $35M.

Contracting the right engineer

I am non-technical, so I worked with a dev agency for v1.0. That proved disastrous. I wasted a ton of time.

They kept making timeline promises they couldn't keep. What was supposed to be a 3-month project turned into 15 months — and at the end of it, I was left with a broken app.

After that, I hired engineers from Upwork until I found a freelancer good enough to get an MVP off the ground.

Even though, we eventually built it, I'd say that not having a technical cofounder was my biggest setback. I wasted multiple years trying to find the right engineering leadership. We'd likely be way further ahead today if I'd had that from the beginning.

Hiring on LinkedIn

Speaking of hiring, I've have had a ton of success hiring from LinkedIn. I look for people who have already worked in the exact role I'm hiring for at a similar — but larger — company. And I reach out to them.

That's where I make most of my hires these days.

A three-pronged approach to growth

We've grown revenue by increasing pricing as the product has matured and by growing our user base. Our biggest channels for the latter have been:

• Content marketing: Educational content around influencer marketing in the form of ebooks, webinars, video courses, newsletter, podcast, etc

• In-person events: Everything from small dinners and happy hours to major conferences where we get a booth and speak on stage

• Agency partnerships: We have a program and dedicated team for our agency partners. We incentivize them to refer their clients to Social Snowball and we refer brands to them as well.

Keep customer feedback top of mind

Here's my advice: Launch with the simplest MVP possible. Then, obsess over feedback from your initial paying customers.

This feedback should guide your roadmap and help you build a product with strong product-market fit.

The product you think you will build vs what you actually build from user feedback is often quite different. Don't lose sight of your big vision, but keep customer feedback top of mind for all product decisions.

What's next?

Since we've already been acquired, my goal is to keep growing the business and one day start another.

You can follow along on LinkedIn. And check out Social Snowball.