Founder-Led Sales: A SaaS to $1 Million ARR With Just 10 Customers

About this episode

Felix Hoffmann shares how he grew 7Learnings to $1M ARR with just 10 customers by creatively solving data acquisition challenges.

He needed a big retailer's data to build the product. No big retailer gives data to a company with no product. Felix Hoffmann solved it sideways: 7Learnings sold a paid consulting project, kept the right to use the data, and built its predictive pricing product on top of it. Ten customers later it was at $1M ARR, and he had closed every one himself. Felix explains why a demand forecasting product cannot start with a small customer, how he structured the first pilot as an A/B test so a retailer could hand over half its prices without betting the business, and what happened when the first run came back far too expensive. Plus: how a pricing optimization company prices itself, and why he refuses success-based fees even though he can prove the uplift. 7Learnings is a Berlin company whose software forecasts demand for each product at each price, then sets the price that hits a retailer's goal. It is now at multiple seven figures in ARR with around 40 customers. Felix spent six years as a pricing consultant at Kearney and two years running price optimization at Zalando before founding it. This episode is brought to you by: 🤖 Hobbes → Don't book a demo. Take one. 🔑 Key Lessons 🎯…

People in this episode

Host: Omer Khan

Guest: Felix Hoffmann

Topics covered

• founder-led sales
• demand forecasting
• pricing optimization
• consulting
• SaaS growth

Keywords

• demand forecasting
• pricing optimization
• SaaS
• consulting project
• A/B testing
• retail pricing
• ARR
• customer acquisition

Sponsors

Hobbes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: 7Learnings, Kearney, Zalando

Places: Berlin

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