How Text Request Grew

“And we had five beta customers that we went out and through relationships, you know, all of these beta customers we knew in some form or fashion, right? Hey, we're doing this. You probably would agree it would help you. Yes. Guess what? We're not going to charge you for it. Would you use it for t...”

Saasclub high

“Brian Elrod explains how building strong relationships—especially with Twilio—led to lucky breaks and real growth for TextRequest.”

YouTube medium

“So I remember we found one, it would work half the time, half the time it would not work. So it was mostly just phone conversations with potential customers, and then getting them into the product and answering their question. It was not a live demo the way they are today. So that evolved as well...”

Saasclub high

“We did a lot of content early, because content was free, right? And so we were doing everything from a content standpoint to get found”

Saasclub high

“It's doing a lot of things well, along with the organic, the paid, the outreach, that sort of thing.”

Saasclub medium

“We learned exactly how they were using it. What exactly they needed that we didn't have, right? Because we obviously were rolling out the most minimal product we could to get out. And I still remember to this date, we went through that for two months. We listened to them. We put that into the pro...”

Saasclub high

“We had a few advocates start using our product and when I mean advocate, meaning they liked it, they were early adopters and they started telling their other franchise owners that looked up to them as an experienced franchise owner and that really kicked it off for us.”

Saasclub high

“And so really the paid ads didn't come until year two, three. We really started, you know, doing more of that. Paid ads are great, they bring in business”

Saasclub high

“So you were doing, so door-to-door evolved to phone calls, which evolved to outbound emails, and you were also doing some paid ads.”

Saasclub high

“I prided myself in talking and doing demos and talking with customers as the CEO, and today, 10 years almost into it, at 15 million, I've done five demos today with customers. So that's the core of who we are. We have a sales team of, we have like 16 people on staff, but I still do demos every da...”

Saasclub high

“We actually just went out and started interviewing. Like you would pitch to an investor, we were pitching software engineers. And so we're willing to give you a third of the business. This is the vision. What do you think? So we went through a couple, and we landed on one. He accepted. And next t...”

Saasclub high

“So you know, that's a broad question, because in the beginning, we thought we were going to sell this door-to-door, and that didn't work very well. We just thought it was, you know, hey, everyone could use this, communications is a problem. We had those four or five college kids, they were going ...”

Saasclub high