Back to 0
Story of how our company persisted through 6 near death experiences in the last 6 months to make it through
Recontact went from dying 6 times in the past couple months, to 500% monthly growth. Like most good startups, we want ours, to be a story of endurance.
So here's our story of going “back to 0”, 6 times, and then just surviving by sheer persistence. Hope it inspires more folks to just ‘hang in there’.
Story 1 - Passionate problem, 0 sales
Recontact started as an AI-contacts app, with a B2C SaaS subscription model, built over a weekend. But I was too much of an introverted engineer to talk about it openly and had failed a startup previously so wasn't confident in myself. $0 in sales and the stress of being a solo-founder made me lose sleep (quite literally) and even though I was passionate and trying to sell to.
What I learnt - be selling your story to everyone ALL the time, preferably find cofounders to work with
Launch video for attempt #1: 👇
Story 2 - Early sales but no PMF, cofounder breakup, back to 0
Recontact was solving professional networking in 2023 and I did a paid pilot with a cofounder in December. The pilot didn't indicate strong signals of "need" from early customers and we wound back with $20 in revenue in Jan 2024. Cofounder split - due to difference in vision and speed intensity. Tried to take some time off college to rediscover, but family didn't support it (and I think they were right in their own way). Had 2 paths - double down on the hustle or let the dream die. Picked #2.
What I learnt - have cofounders of a similar background and intensity and situation - helps in shipping fast. It's okay to wind down and be emotionally detached from personal problems and idea biases, while discovering what to work on.
Launch video for attempt #2: 👇
Story 3 - Promise of high ticket B2B sales, being ambushed, still at 0
Got 2 great cofounders from my undergrad and Recontact now pivoted into CRM automations and sales AI. Found 1 client ready sign an LOI, and the CEO even offered to connect us with her clients facing the same problem. Their team gave us requirements and we built out their workflow. Chased them for 3.5 weeks and we ended up getting ambushed when they said they'll be early customers only if we gave 3% equity, a board seat and veto control. And the platform was ready. We were actually devastated. Said no, moved on cluelessly in the Sales AI space - where we neither had experience nor expertise.
What I learnt - Take money upfront, helps with motivation to stay put in the game.
Launch videos for attempt #3: 👇
Story 4 - Solve your own problem, take extreme steps, don't give up
We solved our own problem - internally, we had a hard time figuring out what users amongst all these 20+ discovery calls per week, so we built a platform for us to use AI for this. We ran about 15+ GTM experiments across 8 user cohorts, NOTHING worked. Asked Safwaan from Founders inc in a quick 2min pitch to just get a guest pass for a place to work out of and some food. He said yes by looking at our grit to survive.
What I learnt - Solving your own problem is the fastest way to get good feedback. Also, grit is rare. Ask for help shamelessly.
Launch video for attempt #4: 👇
Story 5 - Strong problem and ICP, bolder risks, fit but 0 sales
We found a use case in UX research teams after speaking to 100+ researchers and founders in a month. By this point, I'm traveling for 4hrs each day, 6 days a week from mountain view to SF, just for the community and serendipity of Founders inc. 19 hr workdays, calls internationally from 5am to 2am spread out. Requested college to give some attendance relief, guerillaed my way to a top design conference for free, requested people to help us get presenter slot at 3 demo nights, broke into a totally new space, revamped the entire platform - and just kept raising the bar of “how much harder can we try?”. Got early pull from a totally different market - “early stage founders”. And then 1 low wednesday evening on the 27th of the month, met our 1st paying customer and closed $25 in sales before the month ended.
What I learnt - Be desperate with risks, just survive
Launch video for attempt #5: 👇
Story 6 - Early sales in founders, 5x growth, still to get customer success
Started closing more sales deals with early-stage founders. Working out of buses, trains, bus stops and taking calls from cafes as I travel. Some days are honestly just a blur. Realized better GTM strategies in warm intros to them. Grew by 5x in month 2, and now we need to work on customer success and matching the expectations they have from us. My residency at Founders inc is extended - running a bunch of content experiments now. Moving to San Francisco with $0.52 in bank account - will figure it out.
What I learnt - Play it 1 step at a time. Focus on getting your current customers to love you.
Launch video for attempt #6: 👇
Afterthought
If you think any of this is exciting and we had a clue of what would work, rethink. Because this is just Recontact - before building this together, my cofounders and I have tried multiple attempts at starting up, here are stories of the same
Me and our now-CTO trying to build in EdTech, too much focus on product, failed in sales - link
Our CTO exploring something in CloudOps AI for a year - link
Our current CBO trying to crack into the insurance space - link
So yeah, the road is as winding as it gets. As Dalton Caldwell puts it, goal’s to just stay sane and not die.
This was super quick run-through of what we went through and where we’re at. Hope it taught you something from our mistakes and learnings. Until next time 😉