Papermark · B2B · open-source DocSend alternative
Make shared links use your domain unless users add their own
Founder says most growth is organic and word of mouth; 60K+ teams
Workedproduct-viralityword-of-mouth
What they did
Papermark's 60,000+ teams share many document and data-room links. Unless a team adds a custom domain, links default to papermark.com. Recipients who have never heard of Papermark get a link forwarded, see the site, and check whether it fits them. Because most already use a comparable tool, they need no education; a good experience as a viewer leads to a good experience as an admin.
What happened
Founder says a lot of growth is still organic and possibly word of mouth; ~100 signups a day
- Stage
- Ongoing
“If they don't add a custom domain, it defaults to papermark.com. So that's uh an inherent viral loop for us.”
“People that have um you know, never heard of us, they'll get a link uh you know, dataroom document forwarded to them and then see our website.”
“If they have a good experience as a visitor to a document or dataroom, they'll most likely will have a great experience on um as an admin.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Papermark: Tweet the idea first; build it over a weekend only if people engageTweet got 450 likes and 95K+ views; the launch went viral and users asked to pay
- Papermark: Build an open-source alternative to a well-known tool people dislikeNow ~$3M ARR; founder credits timing and a known, disliked incumbent
- Papermark: Share your wins and losses publicly every monthFirst ~1,000 GitHub stars in 1-2 months; 8,900 stars now
- Papermark: Post where your customers are, even if your following is elsewhereOne LinkedIn post reached ~250K views; helps but can't be tracked to revenue
- Papermark: Match the incumbent's must-have features before you expect people to switchUnder $1M for ~2 years; then $1M to $2M in four months once parity hit
- Papermark: Let customers put their own domain and brand on everything they shareFounder calls it a differentiator; no numbers
- Papermark: Keep a free plan forever when the big competitor drops theirs~100 signups a day and ~100 new paying customers a month
- Papermark: Save a year of personal runway first, then bootstrap with a co-founderBootstrapped and profitable at ~$3M ARR; never considered quitting