Hard Work Always Pays: Claimyr = Feel Good Inc.
But Clouds Be a’Formin…
Claimyr is growing with insane metrics & anecdotes:
— 7 months in.
— Since March revenue has grown 16,000%+
— Team has grown from 2 ramen-loving masochists → 11 unbelievably committed employees (what’s this whole payroll thing? time-off? crash-coursing on management. feels like a 補習班)
— Journalists a-knockin’( ABC, NBC, CBS, SF Chronicle, Wall Street Journal)
— User’s cannot hold back their love and tell their friends.
— We’ve directly helped more than 60,000 earn back an average of $7,000 in unemployment benefits (ballparking around $420,000,000 of locked-up cash has been returned to the unemployed)
— All the while, the above growth still happened only in California, 49 other states have the same issue ;)
Whew.
But I’m not celebrating yet. Why? The Odyssey and the didacticism of Homer. To wit: hubris. Nothing ever goes to plan, especially with early-stage startups. My supersistition is telling me to beware.
For example, while we’ve burst onto the scene, the sustainability of the growth is our focus. We went viral. Viral growth != sustainable growth. Revenue has not grown exponentially. 50% of our revenue is from repeat users, above our benchmark for growth (aka ‘new users’). This is somewhat expected: If we kept the 16,000% growth on top of our previous 16,000% growth we’d saturate our market. Viral growth before sustainable growth feels like eating a candy bar before dinner.
Begging some big Qs: How do we attract new users in a stable, predictable, recurring way? How do we expand geographically? How do we hire A players quickly? How do we launch our next product that will take growth to a redunkulas level? If startups=growth, then we need to develop a system of growth. We stumbled into some success sure, but now it’s time to make all of that a methodical machine.
Maybe this seems like high-class problems to you, but they are problems nonetheless. We are not here for the one-and-done show. We are here for those forgotten by the ending federal benefits. We are here for the folks who get left behind when the mainstream has deemed the COVID 19 recession to be ‘over’. We are here to build the crucial infrastructure for the coming recession that will happen in 10 years.
The good news: we have an unreal team. They’re more committed than the founders. This bodes well for aforementioned growth machine. Being around these people and seeing them apply their minds to this problem make me so goddamn proud that I have the chance to work with them. If Claimyr becomes a household name, it’s because of them.
I promise to write more as we advance forth into the great unknown.
