The Only 4M ARR SaaS Startup to Reveal it All

The subject line of the email read: crazy idea, need your feedback :)

I hit send on that email real quick, knowing that if I thought about it too much, I’d chicken out. Because what I was proposing in that email was totally bonkers. Here’s the email…

The part about sharing our growth journey wasn’t too crazy — at least for us at Groove. In the 100K Startup Journey Blog, we were the first startup to share our lessons and struggles on the journey to $100K in MRR back in 2015. The fact that we were even revealing our MRR was pretty shocking for the time.

But what I was proposing in this email went well beyond that.

I was offering to share everything — our financials, our funnel metrics, our growth experiments, P&L statements, all of our internal docs — nothing would be off-limits. And I’d share all that privileged information with anyone — fellow startup founders, our customers, potential customers, and even our competitors.

Honestly, I was hesitant (maybe even terrified) about going through with it.

But since I stopped blogging about our journey in 2018, we’d lost some of that Groove mojo we’d always been known for. Deep down I knew it was time for me to get back into the game.

If I was going to come back though, I needed to make it epic — flip the transparency game and “building in public” on its head. Launch something that the startup community had never seen before.

So I hit send on that email.

I thought if I could get about 100 positive replies, I could consider the idea validated and start fleshing out the details. If I heard crickets, fine, we’d drop the idea and move on.

In the next 24 hours, I received nearly one thousand replies.

I was astounded — not just by the number of replies but by their quality. Many people sent paragraphs of feedback my way. Some expressed how much our previous blog had positively impacted their own startup journey. Others were amazed by how much “confidential” information we were willing to share.

There was no doubt, this idea had been validated.

But then I had another reason to hesitate…

This series would be all about how we were going to grow Groove out of a period of stalled growth. But what if our strategy didn’t work? What if I couldn’t grow Groove? If I revealed it all and we failed, then the whole series would be a flop.

I talked through these hesitations with a previous colleague and it was then that it dawned on me: no strategy is foolproof, not every growth experiment will be a resounding success, and there are going to be months when your growth takes a bath.

No startup is perfect. No startup founder is perfect.

In my experience, the best startup founders are the ones who can recognize imperfection (in their product, in their market, in their team, in themselves) and take inspired action anyway.

That’s when I decided, “We’re doing this thing!” And the “perfect” name came to me: The Imperfect Startup.

An idea so crazy, it just might work

The Imperfect Startup is going to be like having a seat at the board of Groove. You’ll get eyes on all of our metrics, growth experiments, marketing funnels, internal documents - everything and anything.

I’ll also sprinkle in some real-talk about what it takes to grow and scale a SaaS startup, imperfectly.

Every week we’ll share a confidential blog post and a growth experiment with videos walking you through every step of our internal growth process.

Now if you’re thinking, “This dude is crazy, revealing all his company secrets!” Well… you’re probably right.

If you’re worried that there’s some kind of catch here and you’re wondering, “Why is Alex doing this? What’s in it for him?”

I can give you four reasons:

1. This kind of radical transparency is straight up good for Groove. If I look at our company history, the more we’ve shared, the more we’ve grown. Maybe it’s because of the accountability, the power of content marketing, or the thrill of a challenge… whatever the case, transparency is how Groove rolls.
2. I love being a founder, but there are times when it feels lonely and overwhelming. Part of my vision for The Imperfect Startup is that startup founders can learn together, grow together, and feel happier knowing we’re on this epic journey with like-minded people.
3. I genuinely want to help other startups with their growth. I figure that if we’re running these growth experiments, we might as well share our results with the hope that you can save a few bucks or avoid a few heartaches. Plus, the more thriving startups there are out there, the more need there is for our simple yet powerful helpdesk software.
4. I fucking love this shit.

So what’s next?

If you’d like a regular dose of our latest growth experiments, funnel metrics analysis, and some startup real-talk from me, then sign up for The Imperfect Startup email newsletter. It’s totally free and it’s so much more than just another newsletter — it’s a community, a movement, a joint mission to grow each of our startups, imperfectly.