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!