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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 68 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
How Baremetrics Grew
Subscription analytics dashboard for Stripe-based SaaS businesses
How did Baremetrics grow?
Summary of the sourced claims below
Baremetrics grew primarily through SaaS content marketing, where the founder spent significant time writing honest founder stories and publishing useful articles that resonated with entrepreneurs, leading to great traffic and organic sharing. The content often went viral on platforms like Hacker News and Product Hunt, which helped attract new customers without paid promotion. Building in public by publishing every revenue number transparently also contributed to growth and became part of the story that attracted attention. Additionally, word-of-mouth sharing on Twitter and other founder communities played a key role in spreading awareness and acquiring customers.
Channels
26 channels · grouped by how Baremetrics grows
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Organic social media
· 9 mentions · 9 sources“first customers came from, I mean, word of mouth via Twitter. I didn't have some huge Twitter following or anything like that. But I just started posting, like tweeting about the process as I was building it. That kind of built up a little bit of buzz ... It was just posting screenshots of stuff.”
highShow 8 more quotes
“My secret weapon, and source for the large majority of Baremetrics’ first customers, was Twitter.”
high“My secret weapon, and source for the large majority of Baremetrics’ first customers, was Twitter. /gasp I know. Weird...Why on earth would 140-character blobs of text drive dozens of new customers to spend thousands of dollars in recurring charges?”
high“The result is a self-perpetuating content engine where founders share his posts on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter, bringing in new customers without any paid promotion.”
medium“The first 100 customers all came from word-of-mouth via Twitter. I was essentially live-tweeting my process as I got the first version out the door and that brought in those first customers pretty easily.”
high“And then like, what do we look like on social? What do we look like in paid? What do we look like in all these, so kind of just like, taking that one team and then splitting that out. Like, we were just in content. Let’s kind of branch out into everything else.”
medium“user-made virality, a stream of shorts posted by customers showing the three-click caption flow, none of it produced by the company.”
medium“The result is a self-perpetuating content engine where founders share his posts on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter, bringing in new customers without any paid promotion.”
medium“Pigford built the first version in about eight days, charged from day one, and grew it to roughly $30,000 MRR on the back of Twitter and a relentless content engine (SaaS Club, 'Built a SaaS Metrics Tool in 8 Days').”
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Word of mouth
· 6 mentions · 6 sources“So first customers came from, I mean, word of mouth via Twitter... So I launched it and people started telling other Stripe users, started telling their friends about it. The co-founders of Stripe started tweeting about it. That kind of spread the word pretty quickly.”
highShow 5 more quotes
“Twitter was the medium, and the real mode was word-of-mouth. ... What made this particular solution conducive to sharing (and what grew our customer base completely by word-of-mouth) was the immediacy of the solution.”
high“Twitter was the medium, and the real mode was word-of-mouth. But what drove the word-of-mouth? ... What made this particular solution conducive to sharing (and what grew our customer base completely by word-of-mouth) was the immediacy of the solution.”
high“Baremetrics' blog drove as many customers as word of mouth. Founders shared articles on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter, creating organic reach without any paid promotion budget.”
high“He credits Brian Chesky's ten-star customer experience idea as the model, with the bootstrapper's justification that word of mouth is the only free channel.”
high“The content spread organically because SaaS founders are quick to share useful posts, creating a self-perpetuating distribution loop on Reddit, Hacker News, and other founder communities.”
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Content marketing
· 6 mentions · 6 sources“Josh Pigford built Baremetrics into a $30K MRR SaaS business, and his number one customer acquisition channel was not ads, outbound, or partnerships. It was SaaS content marketing - but not the kind most founders think of. In this episode, Josh explains why he hates the term "content marketing," ...”
highShow 5 more quotes
“First: Content I did a big push on publishing content that I thought would be useful to other entrepreneurs, and it paid off. I made a concious effort to not write generic junk that anyone could write, and instead focused solely on the experiences I’ve had that I felt would resonate with other sm...”
high“First: Content I did a big push on publishing content that I thought would be useful to other entrepreneurs, and it paid off. I made a concious effort to not write generic junk that anyone could write, and instead focused solely on the experiences I’ve had... I published one article a week, and a...”
high“Since then most of our growth comes from content marketing.”
high“When we bought the business, there was one person in marketing and they were focused basically exclusively on content. So okay, cool. And Baremetrics has always had great content. So we did a ton of experimentation there from things like what if we did like a ton of content? What if we like gener...”
high“his number one customer acquisition channel was not ads, outbound, or partnerships. It was SaaS content marketing - but not the kind most founders think of. In this episode, Josh explains why he hates the term "content marketing," how spending 25% of his time writing honest founder stories drove ...”
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Building in public
· 4 mentions · 4 sources“from the very beginning, he published every single revenue number publicly. A live dashboard on the Barometrics site showing exactly how much money the company was making. Right. That transparency became the story. In 2014, a blog post titled, How Barometrics Makes Money, went viral on Hacker New...”
highShow 3 more quotes
“that kind of goes back to your initial question of like, hey, Josh was so open, so in public that that was kind of ingrained in the DNA of Baremetrics. So to some extent, not a surprise at something like this. It was probably going to happen at some point in time, unfortunately.”
medium“It took three years of working nights and weekends, writing blog posts, answering questions on forums, and building in public before he hit $500K in ARR.”
high“The “building in public” movement is gaining steam. What is it? BIP = founders/makers openly sharing the process of building their businesses, where others can see, learn, and are encouraged to participate.”
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Podcasting
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“I’ve been publishing new episodes of the Bootstrapped Founder podcast for almost a year now, just shy of twelve months. At the same time, I have been a guest on more than twenty podcasts. Both hosting and appearing on podcasts has changed my life and greatly impacted my audience-building.”
highShow 2 more quotes
“Each blog post was repurposed as a short podcast episode (under 10 minutes), creating an additional distribution channel with minimal extra effort.”
high“Each blog post was repurposed as a short podcast episode (under 10 minutes), creating an additional distribution channel with minimal extra effort.”
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Direct sales
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“Baremetrics never had anybody that was like a dedicated salesperson. So we hired a sales team. And we kind of went through that process of like, what would it look like if you had somebody who was dedicated to you as you signed up to understand what your goals were? And help you get the most out ...”
highShow 2 more quotes
“Users who sign up for free can fill out personality assessments and trial tools, and the sales team identifies enterprise opportunities from within that base.”
high“For the first 100 customers he pulled contact details from Stripe, traded a discount for a text message, and put them in a WhatsApp group that effectively ran product prioritization: "those people will become your best product managers ever."”
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Partnerships
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“Second: Buffer deal You can read all the details there, but the gist of it is that we partnered with Buffer to have them use Baremetrics and make their dashboard public. That just went live two days ago and in that time has added roughly $1500 in net new MRR.”
highShow 2 more quotes
“Second: Buffer deal ... we partnered with Buffer to have them use Baremetrics and make their dashboard public. That just went live two days ago and in that time has added roughly $1500 in net new MRR.”
high“Salesforce is both an investor and one of Crystal's larger customers, providing a strategic partnership that Drew credited as genuinely valuable. This relationship helped validate the enterprise product and supported the company's upmarket positioning.”
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Online Community
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“It took three years of working nights and weekends, writing blog posts, answering questions on forums, and building in public before he hit $500K in ARR.”
highShow 1 more quote
“It took three years of working nights and weekends, writing blog posts, answering questions on forums, and building in public before he hit $500K in ARR.”
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Product Hunt
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“The one conventional launch move was Product Hunt, two months in, at a moment when Submagic had zero US customers and the founders decided to abandon the French market entirely. The launch reached #2 for the day and, in Zitoun's telling, "our main market became the US from this day."”
highShow 1 more quote
“In 2014, a blog post titled, How Barometrics Makes Money, went viral on Hacker News and Product Hunt. Pigford showed revenue growing from zero to $3,000 a month in the first few months. People loved it.”
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Hacker News
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Three made it to the frontpage of Hacker News (if you care about that stuff), and one of those added $1500 in new MRR in 48 hours.”
highShow 1 more quote
“The result is a self-perpetuating content engine where founders share his posts on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter, bringing in new customers without any paid promotion.”
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Thought Leaders
· 1 mention“I mean, like, I think founders as a sort of a market, founders in general are really good about sharing stuff. And so if they find something that's super useful, they're super quick to share it themselves. So it kind of self perpetuates.”
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Dedicated (Stand Alone) Emails
· 1 mention“Join the thousands of subscribers learning about how we’re helping startups grow. Industry insights delivered right to your inbox”
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Email List Growth
· 1 mention“Yeah, so we have a newsletter on the blog that you can drop in your email address on and then all of our customers. So between the newsletter, our customers, and then my personal Twitter account and then the Parametrics Twitter account, that's kind of what we share everything across.”
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Earned media
· 1 mention“Josh spends about 25% of his time on SaaS content marketing, publishing weekly on Wednesdays, and supplements each article with a short podcast episode. The result is a self-perpetuating content engine where founders share his posts on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter, bringing in new customers w...”
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Community forum
· 1 mention“Three made it to the frontpage of Hacker News (if you care about that stuff), and one of those added $1500 in new MRR in 48 hours.”
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Weekly newsletter
· 1 mention“Say we’re sharing on our newsletter what we’ve been working on. We can channel 1 + 2 moves by talking about the process we’ve taken, what we’ve learned, and how we felt about it.”
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Affiliate program
· 1 mention“"We give 30% revenue on the lifetime value of the customers," Zitoun told Latka. "If you become an affiliate tomorrow and you just bring a customer to Submagic, every month that they pay Submagic, you will get your commissions." Zitoun said the program had more than 10,000 affiliates as of June 2...”
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Product-led growth
· 1 mention“Crystal maintains a large free user base of approximately 30,000 to 40,000 monthly signups, which serves as the primary top-of-funnel for enterprise deals. Users who sign up for free can fill out personality assessments and trial tools, and the sales team identifies enterprise opportunities from ...”
high -
Paid social ads
· 1 mention“Higher-priced plans churn less, and the model works because acquisition stays cheap: paid ads run $20–50K a month ("maybe around 50K"), with one in-house person on Facebook ads and outside agencies for creative and Google.”
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Guest posting
· 1 mention“He seeded it with proof: a short he made himself did about 100,000 views and drove roughly $3,000 in MRR, and he showed affiliates that video as the template.”
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Video content
· 1 mention“"user-made virality, a stream of shorts posted by customers showing the three-click caption flow, none of it produced by the company."”
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Twitter
· 1 mention“The result is a self-perpetuating content engine where founders share his posts on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter, bringing in new customers without any paid promotion.”
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Reddit
· 1 mention“The result is a self-perpetuating content engine where founders share his posts on Hacker News, Reddit, and Twitter, bringing in new customers without any paid promotion.”
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Video Ads
· 1 mention“"When you make a YouTube video talking about Submagic, maybe a small percentage clicks the link, but a lot of them see the brand again and again — and this is for free."”
medium -
Memes
· 1 mention“That's exactly it. Right? It's, you know, people post it on Reddit or hacker news or they, you know, they tweet about it themselves and. Or, you know, it'll end up in other newsletters or. I mean, like, I think founders as a sort of a market, founders in general are really good about sharing stuff.”
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Newsletter
· 1 mention“we have a newsletter on the blog that you can drop in your email address on and then all of our customers. So between the newsletter, our customers, and then my personal Twitter account and then the Parametrics Twitter account, that's kind of what we share everything across.”
high
How 3,340 businesses grow
Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each —
Baremetrics’s highlighted.
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Social media64% ◀
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Referral/Word-of-mouth63% ◀
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Search/SEO58%
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Email47% ◀
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Community37% ◀
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Content/Inbound35% ◀
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Partnerships32% ◀
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Events24%
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Paid ads23% ◀
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Outbound/Sales18% ◀
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Press/PR17% ◀
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Marketplaces/App stores12%
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Podcasting4% ◀
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Influencer partnerships3%
