Growing Pains: Lessons Learned in Boostrapping Flozy to 7-Figure ARR in Just Nine Months

The Italian word Sprezzatura is almost exclusively used in the world of men’s fashion. It describes someone who appears effortlessly stylish, whose outfit is casually cool, and just happens to work. 

But in many ways, it’s the platonic ideal of software. Ideally, a user should have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. Any platform they use should seamlessly integrate into their life and business, making it easier. 

It’s important in business too. No one wants to deal with a company that’s full of chaos and confusion - even if the product it offers is class-leading.
 
So it really pains me to shatter the illusion that building and growing Flozy to its current position has been a painless, straightforward and streamlined process. 

It hasn’t. 

The past three years haven’t just challenged me and everyone behind the scenes at Flozy, they’ve taught me the enormous hurdles that so many software business owners face. 

Let’s take a look at Flozy’s journey…

Pre-Launch: How we surveyed over 3,000 users before building a product.

‍Flozy wasn’t my first foray into business.

As well as running an educational technology company, I also owned IAG Media, a digital marketing agency. As well as providing me with a solid foundation and understanding of the challenges of managing clients, reporting, communication and a team, I was also more than conscious of the dangers of jumping head first into something without enough preparation. 

That’s why, before hiring a single software engineer, we sought to survey as many digital business owners as possible. As important as my experience was, it paled in comparison to the incredible insights we gained from this exercise. Responses were varied but we quickly identified a common theme: business owners wanted less, not more. The only way they would ever countenance signing up to yet another platform was if it replaced several of the softwares they were already reliant on. 

Our mission statement was clear: simplify. We began development… 

0-6 Months: Leveraging trust and data to achieve explosive growth (10,000 Signups)
 
As well as providing us with invaluable data and market insight, our survey also gave us a unique marketing opportunity. We knew their problems and marketing was as simple as getting back in touch with the respondents and letting them know we had the solution. 
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This, combined with a heavy marketing push through my business-orientated personal brand resulted in the platform receiving over 10,000 signups in the first six months. 

If you’re reading and imagining me writing this with a smug smile on my face, detailing the perfect product launch and celebrating my foresight, don’t worry. Things soon started going downhill… 

‍6-12 Months: Managing rapid growth and the challenges it brings.

Having managed over 60 clients and worked with thousands of students, I wasn’t fazed by the prospect of a large user base. In fact, my initial plan was to leverage the same systems and processes from my other businesses into Flozy. 

We shared customer support teams, sales flows and onboarding processes. They were battle-tested and had been refined over years of operation… in a completely different industry. 

The initial excitement of hitting 7-figure ARR within nine months quickly turned into a realization that our systems were being stretched to the limit.

We began to notice cracks in areas like customer communication, customer success, and the overall architecture of our software. The surge in users made it clear that our current processes for managing bugs, providing customer support, and onboarding new users were not scalable. This period was marked by an intense focus on understanding user behavior, identifying areas for improvement, and addressing the increasing demands on our system.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though. During this phase, we launched our Black Friday campaign. I was fed up of being taught lessons and being battered by an industry I was new to. So I decided to teach the SaaS space a lesson of its own, leveraging all my experience in ecommerce. 

In the month leading up to Black Friday, our team created a large amount of educational content, including articles, online sessions, and videos, to seed the market and provide immense value to potential users. This content was aimed at educating our audience, building anticipation, and establishing the benefits of our software.

The Black Friday offer itself was a strategic masterstroke—a heavily discounted yearly plan paired with additional free educational content. During Black Friday week, our founding team hosted live events and calls with users, further building trust and excitement. The result was a staggering 1000% increase in revenue compared to previous months.

‍But… this success also brought our underlying operational issues to a head. The influx of new users overwhelmed our existing systems, leading to customer service challenges and the need for immediate bug fixes. We quickly realized that continuing to scale at this pace without addressing these issues would compromise the quality of the user experience.

‍12-18 Months: Strengthening our systems and processes for sustainable growth.

Moving fast and breaking things wasn’t just the internal motto for Facebook in its growth period, it’s also the rallying cry for tech entrepreneurs world over. 

It sounds catchy and it’s impressive to see a company live and die by this sword. But as someone who lives and dies by his reputation, I soon started to tire of things breaking. It was time to move slowly. And so, after an incredible first year of success, we recognized that in order to continue scaling effectively, we needed to make some significant changes. This led to the difficult decision to halt all marketing activities and focus entirely on what mattered most: rebuilding and optimizing our systems and processes.

During this phase, we concentrated on every aspect of our operations—from how our team functioned to the underlying architecture of the software. We transitioned to a microservices architecture for each of the different features we offered, which allowed for greater scalability and interconnectivity with other software. This was a crucial step in ensuring that Flozy could handle future growth and integrations with ease.

Another key area of focus was customer service and customer experience. While we had customer support in place from the beginning, it became clear that we needed to significantly enhance this area. We expanded our customer service team and invested in more resources to ensure that our users received the support they needed. A large portion of customer queries stemmed from a lack of understanding of how the software worked, so we also made it a priority to improve our educational materials and support systems. This included allowing users to book calls directly with our team for personalized assistance.

To achieve these improvements, we brought in a range of consultants—experts in technology, security, and software architecture. Security was our top priority, and we took extensive measures to ensure that our platform was secure and reliable. We also engaged with other CTOs and software architects to gather insights on the best practices for scaling our operations.

The majority of our efforts during this rebuilding phase were centered around enhancing customer success and experience. We spent considerable time talking to our customers, understanding their pain points, and figuring out how we could better support them. 

At this point, there was not even a hint of Sprezzatura at Flozy. This was a period of stress, frustration and nitpicking. These were not heady days of optimism and successful launches instead. This was a period of long nights, difficult decisions and invisible inputs. 

Rebuilding the architecture of the software, at great cost, for example, wasn’t something that users would notice directly, but it meant that we could absolutely guarantee the scalability and performance of Flozy. 

‍18-24 Months: Evolving our product and identity to meet the changing market needs.

Armed with a stronger platform and more robust processes, and more than ready to turn the revenue taps back on, we noticed something pressing with our brand. Flozy was previously known as ‘AgenciFlow’, reflecting our genesis in digital marketing agencies. 

But as we continued to engage with our users, we realized that our tool’s utility extended far beyond agencies.

The tool, initially designed to help users manage clients, teams, and workflows, was increasingly being adopted by other types of businesses—coaches, consultants, accounting firms, law firms, and more. These users were leveraging AgenciFlow to manage their clients, take notes, handle contracts, and issue invoices. We began to feel that the name “AgenciFlow” was too limiting and might pigeonhole us, restricting our growth beyond the agency market.

That’s when we struck gold when we secured the domain flozy.com for $1,989 USD. The name “Flozy” maintained the core concept of optimizing workflows—a principle that had been central to our mission from the start—while being short, simple, and versatile enough for frequent use.

The rebranding process felt like revisiting the foundational questions of our business: 

‍Who are our customers? What features do they truly need? How can we best solve their problems? 

‍At this stage, our tool was primarily focused on internal client and team management, but we realized that our users wanted to consolidate even more of their business operations into a single platform.

This led us to a pivotal expansion of our offerings. We decided to empower digital businesses to build and manage their online presence directly through Flozy. This included creating websites, landing pages, and funnels to attract clients and guide them into their ecosystem. From there, users could leverage our CRM to nurture relationships and track the client journey. Once clients were onboarded, the comprehensive suite of tools within Flozy allowed for seamless project management, calendar booking, task tracking, note-taking, and much more—including invoicing and contracts.

It was at this point that we realized we were building something much larger than we initially anticipated. In the age of X’s lofty but unrealized ambitions to become the ‘everything app’, it might sound like a curse but we realised that Flozy had to become a ‘super app’ for digital businesses. 

Soul searching aside, it was time to make some money…

‍24-30 Months: Seeing 50% MoM growth months.

As we entered the 24 to 30-month phase, everything was finally starting to come together. The rebrand to Flozy was complete, and we had successfully launched the new features that positioned us as a true super app for digital businesses. With these pieces in place, it was time to address the final critical component of our strategy: focusing on customer success.

From our first wave of users, we learned that most of the challenges weren’t due to a broken product, but rather a lack of understanding about how to use it effectively. We realized that in order to scale sustainably, we needed to redefine what customer success meant for Flozy. This involved identifying the key metrics that would help us understand the difference between a fully activated user and one who had just signed up. 

We expanded our customer service team to provide 24/7 support and implemented daily sessions that users could join for real-time assistance. Once these processes were in place, we gradually reintroduced marketing activities. The results were immediate: we saw a new wave of growth, with month-on-month increases of 50%, reminiscent of the early days of Flozy.

Over the past six months, we’ve fine-tuned our processes, from customer service to internal workflows, and built out a more robust affiliate network. We’ve also implemented comprehensive dashboards to track key metrics across the board, ensuring we have a clear view of our performance in all areas.

Now, as we reflect on our journey, it’s clear that we’re in a much stronger position than when we first started. Our retention rates, activation rates, and overall performance metrics have all dramatically improved. 

But more importantly, our product, our service, our platform has improved. The amusing reality of business is that it’s never straight forward. There are always fires to fight.

The trick, is to make sure that your customers never notice and continue to receive the best service they can. That’s true Sprezzatura. 
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Written by Iman Gadzhi September 2024