Postscript

How Three Founders Scaled Postscript to a $656M SMS Empire

March 14th, 2025

Founded By

Adam Turner

Monthly Revenue

$83.3K

Founders

Employees

270 (est.)

Profitable

Yes

Year Started

2018

Founded By
Adam Turner: Monthly Revenue
$83.3K

Founders
3: Employees
270 (est.)

Profitable
Yes: Year Started
2018

Who is Adam Turner?

Adam Turner, co-founder and CEO of Postscript, grew up in Phoenix and briefly attended the United States Air Force Academy before transferring to USC to study physics. He caught the startup bug working with his brother Colin at Wiblits, a mobile gaming company, and later gained experience in product management at StackCommerce, where he met future co-founder Alex Beller.

What problem does Postscript solve?

Postscript handles the hassle of SMS marketing for Shopify merchants, making it simple for businesses to engage customers through effective, two-way text conversations, helping customers buy more and solve their doubts instantly.

How did Adam come up with the idea for Postscript?

Alex Beller, along with his co-founders, found inspiration for Postscript during a discussion about the lack of personal and effective marketing channels for e-commerce businesses. They noticed that Shopify merchants lacked a direct and engaging way to communicate with their customers. This gap in the market presented a unique opportunity to develop an SMS marketing platform tailored specifically for Shopify users, allowing these businesses to engage directly with their customers through text messages.

In the early stages, the founders immersed themselves in customer support by setting up a live chat widget, which offered invaluable insights into user needs and pain points. By responding immediately to every user query, they were able to gather direct feedback, refine their offering, and prioritize features that their clients genuinely found useful. This hands-on approach also led to happy customers, who in turn, helped spread the word about Postscript.

They faced challenges in maintaining focus, resisting tempting opportunities to expand the product’s scope beyond SMS for Shopify, which required significant discipline. Learning from this, they strongly embraced the idea of focusing on a core user group and solving a specific problem niche. These strategic decisions informed the core values and vision for Postscript, contributing to its growing success.

How did Adam Turner build the initial version of Postscript?

The founders of Postscript built their product by leveraging a specific development and integration process focused on SMS marketing for e-commerce on Shopify. Adam Turner and Colin Turner took on the initial development tasks, with Colin crafting the app's user interface and Adam developing the backend, which linked to customer data layers. This foundational work was executed in their spare time while maintaining full-time jobs, often involving long hours of coding sessions at unconventional times. The development of the first prototype focused on creating a minimum viable product (MVP) that would effectively address the demand for SMS marketing tools tailored to Shopify merchants. The iteration process was heavily influenced by direct customer feedback, garnered through an intense customer engagement strategy that involved live support chats handled personally by the founders. The building process involved significant challenges, such as working with limited resources and performing extensive customer service personally, often leading to night and weekend shifts. However, this direct interaction with users allowed the team to rapidly iterate on the product, making adjustments to meet real-time customer needs and enhancing their product-market fit.

What was the growth strategy for Postscript and how did they scale?

Shopify App Store and Word of Mouth

Postscript found significant growth through its presence on the Shopify App Store and word of mouth from satisfied customers. By integrating directly with Shopify, they tapped into a built-in audience of e-commerce businesses that could immediately benefit from their SMS marketing solutions. As Postscript provided excellent support and responded to customer inquiries promptly, happy users left positive reviews on the Shopify App Store. These reviews helped boost their app's visibility, leading to organic growth as more potential customers discovered their service through the platform.

Why it worked: The Shopify App Store serves as an ecosystem with a large, dedicated audience of e-commerce businesses looking for tools to enhance their stores. Postscript’s focus on delivering a high-quality solution and exceptional customer service led to positive reviews, which improved app visibility. This created a feedback loop where more users discovered and recommended their service, amplifying their growth through word of mouth.

Real-Time Customer Support

Postscript implemented a system where all founders were directly involved in customer support via live chat, providing swift and effective responses to user inquiries. This direct communication with customers not only helped in resolving their issues quickly but also contributed to valuable product feedback. By being immediately available to support users, the company fostered a strong customer relationship, encouraging them to recommend the service to others, thereby increasing their user base.

Why it worked: Personalized and attentive support made customers feel valued, increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction. Satisfied customers were more likely to recommend Postscript to others, leading to organic growth. This direct feedback loop also facilitated rapid iterations and improvements to the product, ensuring it met customer needs effectively.

Conversational SMS Marketing

Postscript innovated by creating a team of sales associates who engaged personally with customers through SMS, answering questions, providing product information, and offering discounts. This approach mirrored the in-store personal shopper experience, making customers feel heard and valued. As a result, this strategy significantly increased the purchase rate from text interactions, leading to higher sales conversion rates for their clients.

Why it worked: This approach provided a unique and personalized shopping experience that distinguished Postscript from traditional one-way marketing methods. By addressing customer inquiries and concerns in real-time through SMS, they transformed standard marketing messages into engaging conversations, which substantially increased conversion rates from 25% to 60%.

Integration of AI Tools

Postscript started integrating AI tools to personalize and optimize SMS marketing for their clients. These tools allowed them to run numerous variations of text messages to determine which ones resonated best with specific consumer groups. The AI-driven approach helped refine message content and timing, enhancing the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and driving a 20% increase in sales generated through text messages for their customers.

Why it worked: AI technology enabled Postscript to tailor marketing messages to specific customer preferences, enhancing relevance and personalization. This detailed analysis of consumer behavior and preferences led to more effective marketing campaigns, resulting in increased customer engagement and sales, further establishing Postscript as a leader in SMS marketing innovation.

What's the pricing strategy for Postscript?

Postscript offers tiered pricing based on message volume, starting at $25/month for 1,000 messages and scaling to enterprise custom pricing; it includes a free trial.

What were the biggest lessons learned from building Postscript?

Focus on Core Strengths: Postscript's growth owes much to its laser focus on a core product - SMS marketing for Shopify users. By concentrating on a specific niche, they turned down lucrative opportunities that didn't align with their primary mission. This focus helped them develop expertise and deliver superior value to their customers.
Customer-Driven Development: Early on, Postscript's founders responded directly to customer chats, gathering invaluable insights into product improvements and needs. This hands-on approach not only fueled product development but also built strong customer relationships, leading to word-of-mouth referrals and increased platform visibility.
Values as Cultural Anchors: Establishing and evolving company values provided a cultural foundation as Postscript grew. By creating memorable acronyms like FEACH, they ensured values were easy to remember and reflect real workplace behaviors. This has helped in scaling the culture cohesively across a growing team.
Adapt Management with Growth: As Postscript expanded, they learned that organizational needs change significantly with each doubling in headcount. This required evolving their management style and infrastructure to efficiently handle a rapidly growing team without losing company agility and focus.
Harness AI for Personalized Experiences: Postscript leveraged AI advancements to personalize SMS marketing, transforming typical marketing into conversational commerce. By tailoring interactions, they created a more engaging customer experience, which significantly boosted sales and helped maintain their competitive edge.

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