Akool · AI video and avatar maker
Add a payment page so walk-in users can pay without a sales call
Users began paying on their own; revenue went from ~$100K to $2-3M the next year
Workedpayments-checkoutpositioning-niche
What they did
While trying to close large B2B customers (a slow process), many users were already using the product on their own. The team put a payment gateway on the product and people started paying online by themselves, mostly from organic traffic. This moved the company from pure B2B to a B2B/B2C mix.
What happened
People began to pay on their own; revenue went from ~$100K (2022) to $2-3M (2023), though the Coca-Cola deal landed the same year
- Stage
- 2022-2023
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
In their words
Top Founders with Nathan Latka · "I Built My Own AI Video Model, Now Make $3M a Month," Akool CEO Jeff Lu“When we first launched, uh we try to close some B2B customers, and uh uh some larger ones, and the process is very slow, and there are a lot of users come using it by itself. So, we just put a payment gateway on it, and then uh people begin to pay.”
“Uh we get some organic traffic, and people uh come by themselves, and uh just pay uh by themselves online.”
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More from this episode
- Akool: Post demos of what your tool makes in related Reddit, Facebook and Discord groupsMain source of early users, per founder; no numbers
- Akool: Spend the first years chasing large enterprise contractsDidn't work; revenue flat at ~$100K for two years
- Akool: Book one-on-one calls with people already using similar tools, and listenPart of how the first 100 customers came in; no numbers
- Akool: Pitch your tool to Fiverr freelancers who sell the same work by handFounder confirms they did it; no results given
- Akool: Train small AI models for one task each instead of one giant modelKeeps costs down; Coca-Cola picked it after 3 months of benchmarks
- Akool: Hire your first sales rep once enterprise deals start coming in on their ownRevenue $2-3M to $12-13M that year; enterprise now drives most growth
- Akool: Charge businesses by usage so their bill grows as they build you into their softwareLargest contract reached ~$4M a year
- Akool: Add a cheaper starter plan below your existing tiers