Akool · AI video and avatar maker
Hire your first sales rep once enterprise deals start coming in on their own
Revenue $2-3M to $12-13M that year; enterprise now drives most growth
Workedsales-org
What they did
Until 2023 there were no AEs; the first enterprise deal (Coca-Cola) came fully inbound. The first account executive was hired in 2024. Today there are 4-5 quota-carrying reps, each on a $1M quota (described as standard).
What happened
Revenue grew from $2-3M (2023) to $12-13M (2024) and $25M (2025); founder says most recent growth comes from enterprise sales
- Stage
- 2024-present
In their words
Top Founders with Nathan Latka · "I Built My Own AI Video Model, Now Make $3M a Month," Akool CEO Jeff Lu“but uh we got our first A account AE in 2024, and then uh begin to do more of the sales and uh management work and so on, yeah.”
“Yeah, so we have about four or five uh quota-carrying sales reps, and uh it's pretty standard to give $1 million quota per person.”
“More recently, yeah.”
Related topics
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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: Add a payment page so walk-in users can pay without a sales callUsers began paying on their own; revenue went from ~$100K to $2-3M the next year
- 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: 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