- Efficient growth
- Posts
- $5k to $16k/mo in 60 days due to 1 decision
It took Aeva AI one year to get to $5K MRR and within 60 days of us working together they grew to $16K MRR.
They made one bet that now returns $1.5K MRR in net new growth every week.
As a founder, you only have a limited number of "bets" you can place. The right bets can be huge multipliers, the wrong ones can put months of time (and money) in the bin.
Signs that you’re wasting bets:
Flat or inconsistent MRR despite hustle
Funnel leakage - low close rates on calls and poor self-serve conversions
Feeling uncertain about prioritising sales channels or product features
Why did Ava's bet succeed? They stopped misdiagnosing their flat growth as a product issue and tackled the real challenge: the wrong go-to-market approach.
They thought the key to their next leg of growth was adopting a self-serve motion where users could sign up, try the product for free and hopefully convert.
This is a terrible decision for most early-stage startups.
A self-serve motion as part of product-led growth (PLG) is far more than slapping a free trial on your website and hoping users somehow magically use your product and realise its impact.
PLG works because your company has reached a level of maturity where you are clear on the user, what they need to succeed, and your product is in a position to effectively activate, retain and monetise the user. In an early-stage startup it’s highly likely that you have none of this. I go into more detail on this topic in a past email “why self-serve PLG might kill your startup”.
As part of this switch we firstly gave them the confidence it was the right decision (from working with over 100+ startups), we then helped them put together the pieces across the buyer’s journey such as messaging, pricing and the public-facing assets.
I recorded a video of me speaking with Chris, Aeva’s co-founder, about this transformation in more detail. Feel free to give it a watch.
Happy building,
Liam
P.S.
If you want someone in your corner who can quickly diagnose your growth problems and work with you to fix them, read more about our process here.