This document summarizes the story of quintly, a social media analytics SaaS company founded in 2010 by two technical co-founders in Germany. It details their journey from a small prototype in 2010 with $20k in ARR to growing their team to 34 members with $2.5m in ARR by 2017. Key learnings included bootstrapping the business, doing early sales themselves, focusing on revenue over investors, keeping the business family-owned, and constantly innovating the product. The co-founders learned the importance of company culture, standardized processes, and not being afraid to fail along the way.

1. Building a SaaS company with
only technical co-founders
The quintly Story

2. • Our Product:
Social Media Analytics platform
• Location:
Cologne, San Francisco and Sao Paulo
• Team:
34 team members with 18 nationalities
• ARR:
Around 2.5 million USD

3. Spring 2010
The Beginning - ARR: $0
• One computer scientist (My brother) and one mathematician with some
consulting experience (me)
• Running an agency for 2 years and fed up with the agency lifestyle
• No clue about marketing, no clue about sales, no clue about investors
• BUT: We were pretty good developers

4. Learnings
• Don’t be afraid of anything
• Try, fail, learn (repeat), but don’t make the same mistake twice
• It’s ok not to know certain things

5. 2010
The First Prototype
• Build prototype from a small town in Germany
• Problem came up through an agency client project
• First few clients until end of 2010
• Funny thing: Our first three clients are still clients
• Really crappy user interface
ARR: ~$20K

6. Learnings
• Your biggest advantage as a tech guy:
You can actually build a product for low cost
(basically your own time and salary)
• It helps to have a good relation to the problem you are solving

7. 2011 - 2012
Growing into a real product
• Lucky coincidence got in touch with US investor
• Got funding beginning of 2011 from US investor
• Renamed to „AllFacebook Stats“
• Start of our international rollout
• Bought back our shares end of 2012
• Completely family owned after this
• Product Market Fit Phase
• Move to Cologne
ARR: ~$250K

8. Learnings
• Sometimes you just have to be lucky, but persistence increases
the chance of being lucky
• Investors come and investors go
• Being in an ecosystem helps a lot
• The best investor in the world is called Revenue

9. 2013 - 2014
Going multi network
and start selling
• Going beyond Facebook
• Renamed to “quintly”
• Introduced formalized sales process
• Spent multiple months in the US
ARR: ~$1m

10. Learnings
• Just go out there and do the sales yourself, even if you hate it
(it’s not so bad after all)
• A good product is worth nothing if you can’t sell it
• You have to do everything yourself first before you should hire someone
• Go to places where there are companies with similar business models

11. 2015 - 2016
Scaling up
• Growing into a real company
• Increasing team to have specialists for every field
• Switching the office for the first time
• Introduction of Company Culture
• Multi company structure with flip to quintly Inc.
ARR: ~$2.5m

12. Learnings
• Company culture is really important (one that allows for authenticity)
• It never gets easier, new challenges will come up that you never
thought existed
• Tax and Legal sucks big time in an international market

13. 2017
Reinventing and processes
• Reinventing of our product
• Introduction of more standardized processes
• Setting up the company for the next decade

14. Learnings
• Always keep innovating
• Growing the team causes pain and slows you down

15. Growth of Employees
160,000+
hours worked *
* over 54 man years
10
20
30
40
3/1/2011
10/1/2011
5/1/2012
12/1/2012
7/1/2013
2/1/2014
9/1/2014
4/1/2015
11/1/2015
6/1/2016
1/1/2017
8/1/2017
34

16. Key Learnings
• Building a profitable SaaS business is pretty cool
• Bootstrapping may take more time, but it’s possible to succeed
• Don’t get nervous when you hear how successful others are - There is
a lot of bullshit out there
• Be very honest with your metrics - Always!
• It’s ok to be ashamed about your mistakes from the past
(It’s probably bad if you are not ashamed)

17. Building a SaaS company with
only Technical Co-Founders
The quintly Story