$10M ARR is the FU MONEY of SaaS. At $10M ARR bootstrapped, you and your co-founder clear $1M /year in salary and dividends easily. You can sell instantly for $30-40M. There are hundreds of EBITDA buyers at this level vs. a handful at $1B valuations. From here, you can do whatever you want. Hire a CEO and work 1 hour/week. Grind 100 hours if that's your thing. Raise $50M from a position of strength. Scale to $25M ARR with 25 people and pay yourself $10-15M/year. Most companies never get here because VCs show up early with decacorn dreams and money you don't need. That capital interferes with the one thing that makes you great: product-market fit. Bootstrapping to $10M ARR is easier and less risky than creating a VC-backed unicorn, with a far higher probability-weighted outcome. If you can find PMF and use customer money to get to $10M, you can do anything you want with your life.

Me: I think RB2B will stall out at around $12-13m ARR. Diana: Remember when that was the dream? Yes, I remember. There were YEARS of my career as a Founder where that seemed so out of reach. I was stuck at $3m ARR for YEARS and had no idea how we would get out of it. We would chase bad product ideas. Copy other vendors features. Go to SaaS conferences and try whatever speeches were given by people ahead of us. We were stuck for so long that I thought that if I EVER got a bootstrapped business to $13m ARR all of my dreams would come true. And now, RB2B, when it hits $13m ARR, will have ONE FTE working on it, and will be one of three businesses that we own above $10m. And I’m shrugging my shoulders, saying “eh, it’s ok. I really want MoltSets to get to $10m ARR too and be our 4th biz there.” Life is funny that way. You just have to keep building. Eventually yesterday's dreams will become today’s underwhelming reality.

I’M TIRED, TIRED, TIRED OF DATA COMPANIES BENDING STARTUPS OVER BACKWARDS TO SCREW US ON CONTACT DATA. We’ve bought every vendor under the sun, expensive, cheap, seats, no seats, and every time we switch it STILL feels too expensive. The standard price of contact data is $99 per 5,000 credits. MoltSets.com is $27/mo for UNLIMITED CONTACT DATA. Yes, MoltSets will eventually destroy ZoomInfo and Apollo. YOU: I bet your data quality is shit. ME: TEST OUR DATA COVERAGE AND ACCURACY. It will be just as good as what you’re using. We have to be good to serve RB2B. It was built by me, Tate, and the former president of Apollo/VP product and growth at ZoomInfo. Don’t believe me, test it! YOU: Why are you pricing it so cheap? How can you run a profitable business that way? ME: I’M LITERALLY SELLING SAWDUST. We are using the data team and data asset (very profitably) in 3 other business lines. YOU: Why are you yelling at me? ME: BECAUSE MOLTSETS AT $27/MO UNLIMITED IS FUCKING INSANE. YOU: Aren’t you worried about someone stealing your whole database? ME: Not really. This is a distribution play. If someone stole our database (and I’m sure they will), they will violate TOS (which they will not care about), stop paying us $27/mo (who cares), and then try to do what?!?! Go up against my founder brand, our UGC, and our internal validation engine to acquire customers how?!?!? I think 5x5 already commoditized B2B data, so I want to sell high quality data at a throwaway price and watch an explosion of vibe-coded apps like we've never seen. Imagine what you can build when contact data is (nearly) free! Join the MoltSets wait list here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F… Over 2,000 people have already signed up. Beta starts soon.

Last Wednesday I gave up on my new startup MoltSets entirely. I was devastated. Today, I think it's a $10m ARR biz because of ONE CHANGE we made to the offer. Here's what happened: First, a little background... - 7 weeks I stopped working on RB2B - To focus on MoltSets - unlimited contact data APIs - We’ll be in closed beta next week - waitlist below My original hypothesis for MoltSets is that a large number of Clay Agencies (maybe 200?) would pay $495/mo for MoltSets. That alone isn’t an attractive business. But I hoped how loud they were would pull in growth marketers and Founders at $199/mo, and individual reps who wanted to do sales in Claude at $19/mo. Then I had 3 of the biggest Clay Agencies say the same thing last week: “There’s probably 10-30 people who would pay $500/mo for that.” FACK! But then one of them suggested something WILD. What if instead of trying to get HUNDREDS of people on $497/mo… You tried to get THOUSANDS of people on a $97/mo plan that was unlimited and STILL had huge rate limits??? As I continued my conversations with GTM nerds, the enthusiasm for the $97/mo offer became palpable. So much so, that a few people said words that are music to my ears: “How can you run a profitable business with a $97/mo truly unlimited offer?” When I explained it to them, it clicked: 1. We have incredibly cheap, massive awareness through LinkedIn 2. We are already using our database and data team (profitably) to serve three other business lines 3. MoltSets piggybacks on those two “moats” for another path to monetization of both of them, and 4. We will do this without humans, like RB2B “Ah, I see.” (they said, nodding) TAKEAWAY Customer Discovery is more important than ever. I’ve never sent a cold email or made a cold call, and I’m trying to design a product for people who are the best in the world at it. Vibe-coding makes you think you should just throw a product out there and see what happens. But unless you are LITERALLY eating your own dogfood and solving a PAINFUL PROBLEM that you actually have, there’s no way your vibe-coded slop will be disruptive. Going $0-$1 quickly requires two things: 1. A disruptive product 2. Disruptive marketing If you don’t have both, you’ll get stuck. I know because I’ve been there. There’s only ONE WAY I know of to create both those things … CUSTOMER DISCOVERY. The market knows. You just have to ask. P.S. Join the MoltSets waitlist here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F… Get Unlimited Contact Data APIs for Clay and Claude Code. (We are trying something new w/ whatsapp, so if you signed up before, sign up again)

Clay ($204m raised) Apollo ($250m raised) ZoomInfo (public company) Orum ($82m raised) SalesLoft ($246m rasied) RB2B ($0 raised) WILD. This is proof you can bootstrap a “billion dollar brand” without raising a $1 of VC Keep building!

Join us here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi…

This is WILD! Not only is RB2B the 12th fastest growing software vendor according to Brex, it’s an almost entirely autonomous business at this point. We’ve gone from 3 employees down to 1 employee, and a few people working on it part time. 100% bootstrapped.

Founder: I’ve got 35 AI agents making me 100x more productive! Me: But you’re still on Zoom calls 9 hours a day... Founder: [nods] Me: You’re missing the point of AI Founder: What do you mean? Me: You’re trying to bend AI to fit into your existing business. And yeah, you will see some incredible gains come from that. But it's not enough. Founder: So what’s the problem? Me: If you rebuilt your product, pricing, and go-to-market around AI… it could run your entire front line. Every customer conversation. Every interaction. You’d be free to focus on SUPER-high-leverage stuff. Product, brand, growth. Founder: That SOUNDS nice, but our product requires a sales call to get people properly educated and onboarded. Me: You’re still missing the point. If your product, pricing, and positioning is simple enough, AI can handle ALMOST every customer interaction. We proved that with RB2B. Founder: But our product is more complex than yours. It has to be. Me: That’s what every SaaS founder says right before they get out-executed by some YC kid with an AI-native business. Over the next few years, the old guard will stall out, while a new generation of truly AI-native companies emerge who design their product and go-to-market strategies in a way where every human minute spent ACTUALLY gets amplified by 100x. Founder: What does that even look like? Me: AI has made the 3-man, $10m ARR SaaS a reality. How? If you’re not on calls all day, you can spend your time on MUCH higher leverage activity like product, pricing, and growth. Founder: Yeah, but we aren’t RB2B. So what should I do? Me: Stop asking, ‘How can AI help us do more of what we already do?’ Start asking, ‘What would my business look like if AI could do almost all of it?’ Design that version. Then build toward it. Founder: That’s kind of terrifying. Me: It should be. Because if you don’t, you’re screwed. Founder: And if I do? Me: You win. $10M ARR. A couple FTEs. The FU money of SaaS.

I’m launching a new startup called MoltSets - Unlimited Contact Data API’s for Clay and Claude Code. Here’s our full business plan (and how we get to $5m ARR): Before I start… I am wildly confused and anxiety ridden about the TAM being too small, the market being too saturated, and ending up stuck and this being a waste of time. But I’m still going to go for it and let reality decide. WHAT IS MOLTSETS AND HOW IS IT DIFFERENT? Unlimited contact database for Claude Code / Clay. A few things set MoltSets apart from the competition: - 100% of emails will be valid, under 30d, date appended to record - Phone numbers will be real-time carrier verified - We will append website content to the company records Here’s how we’re going to price: - $19/mo - unlimited, but LOW rate limit - use case would be individual reps in Claude, building lists of 10-20 contacts - $199/mo - unlimited, medium-y rate limit - use case would be growth marketers building and enriching lists in claude - $999/mo - unlimited, very very high rate limit - use case would be lead gen agencies adding MoltSets to their waterfalls in Clay and Claude Code BUT ADAM, ISN’T CONTACT DATA COMMODITIZED AND COMPETITIVE AS BALLS? Yes. But we have unique access to cheap acquisition channels that support this low-price, high-value, frictionless PLG funnel. 1. My thought leadership is 1:1 with these audiences - Anytime I write anything about Clay it rips. Clay’s audience is the $199 (many) and $999 (a few) leadgen agency - MoltSets is the next story in my thought leadership journey 2. I’m going all-in on UGC - Creators get 50% off for posting 2x/mo on LinkedIn about MoltSets - I will comment on every single post from my personal account - You grow your following by talking about workflows & lowering your email bill 3. I’m pivoting my weekly workshop to be about Claude Skills - Title: Claude Did WHAT?!? … B2B Experts Share Skills You Can Deploy Today - Agency guests can share Claude Skill for GTM, give the .md files, and market their services in the skill itself - I believe I can get agencies more eyeballs than they can get themselves - This will be excellent YouTube content 3. We will front-run the explosion of autonomous marketing agents - We’ll launch w/ Stripe MPP and Coinbase x402 agent wallet capability - No api keys required for agents, no minimums - We’ll start building our own GTM skill library for agents - None of this will be revenue out of the gates, but prob 90% in 3 years ALL THAT SOUNDS GOOD ADAM, BUT THAT BUSINESS SOUNDS “SMALL”. MoltSets might end up being “small”. Maybe 2, 3, 5m ARR. Maybe less. But if we get lucky and a couple of these hypothesis hit... It could end up being “not small”. MoltSets will take advantage of distribution moats that we enjoy with RB2B, and allow us to monetize a dataset we already own. Will it crush? Or will it flame out? I’m dying to know what you think. Join the waitlist for the closed beta: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…

Yesterday, RB2B crossed $9m ARR. I don’t think people understand how crazy RB2B is as a business. This is not me bragging about my ability as a founder. If it WASN’T my business, I would think the same thing. Here are 15 insane facts about RB2B: 1. Tate (CTO), Robb, and I decided to go all-in on MoltSets (a new business) five weeks ago. 2. Tate has not touched RB2B code in five weeks. 3. Robb handles escalated tickets in 15min/day or less. 4. I post 3x/week on LinkedIn, NOT about RB2B. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? 5. Since day 1, we kept the product dead simple so that AI could handle customer interaction 6. Robb Clarke made world-class documentation so that Intercom Fin can handle everything 7. Fin started out at 25% resolution, Fin now handles 98.9% of all tickets, escalates 1.1% 8. I have an insanely cheap acquisition channel - my LI thought leadership brand 9. We are a data company, have two other product lines … so we were able to create a B2B database that had zero marginal cost of fulfilling a contact 10. Combine 8 9, we were able to price our zero-friction PLG product below competition’s CAC, data costs crushed everybody else from a gross margin perspective 11. We are bootstrapped, so sub-VC scale opportunity of $10-$15m with insanely lean business was actually a MASSIVE WIN to us, given our two other very profitable businesses 12. Because of #11, we didn’t need to add 20 features to cater to mid-mkt, lower churn, and do $30k annual deals - stayed SMB freemium PLG at 9 % monthly churn 13. As a result, all of our competition from 2 years ago left the market for bigger, better, and far more complex things 14. RB2B’s value prop remains POWERFULLY SIMPLE, with the brand RB2B = WEBSITE ID compounding in the collective consciousness of the B2B SaaS market 15. RB2B remains the last man standing. We may have caught lightning in a bottle w/ RB2B. I’m not saying you should go out and try to copy it, because it can’t be done. BUT… Knowing that you can create a business that: - Is founder-led, bootstrapped, and a sub-VC scale opportunity - Can grow to and eclipse $10m ARR, and - At that point can be almost completely autonomous As a founder (or an aspiring founder) you should know that is possible. The game has changed. The new playbook isn’t about “more” … It’s about less, smarter, faster, and completely YOURS.

FYI: Customers churn weeks before saying anything, and you miss it. In the very beginning at Retention(.)com, our product sounded amazing. We were making our customers money… but we couldn't show people HOW we were making them money. So they churned. The signs were all there…I just didn't know how to read them yet. This is what to watch for in your business… If customers stop talking to you. They stop using the product. If they're not using it anymore, they'll churn eventually. We weren't clearly displaying the value of what we were doing. The better we got at that, the better the stickiness got. People want some type of return. If they're not getting it, they're already gone.

Someone asked me recently what decisions I’m losing sleep over. And there wasn’t one. For 4 years, I was anxious, grinding, and had no idea whether any of this would work. The stress was constant. But at some point (and this didn't happen by accident), it got easier. We got better at: > Defining people's roles > Setting expectations > Defining deliverables And all the credit goes to our executive coach for a lot of that. We have so many good and bad things behind us now that almost nothing catches us off guard. Everything just hums. All that was required was making the conscious choice to simplify everything.

5 years into building, we were pushing Robly hard, trying to break past $2.5M ARR. It was clear it wasn’t working… …so we got super small and figured it out. The same thing happened in 2023. We went all in on scaling the sales function at Retention(.)com - hired reps, built out outbound…later on, it was clear that was the wrong decision. Instead of pressing, we pulled back and reassessed. From that, we were able to pivot into other product lines. “That’s great, but what’s the point?” Both times, being self-funded is the ONLY reason why we were able to take a step back and find a new path forward. The second you take capital, you step on a treadmill that does not stop, does not slow down, and getting off means you have to fall flat on your face first. TLDR: Chances are you are much better off avoiding VC/YC.

The biggest mistake I see at $10m ARR - and I see it ALL the time - is Founders getting caught up in the completely unavoidable euphoria of real traction and raising VC money for a business that is actually sub-VC scale. The euphoria happened to me. I totally went for it in 2022-2023 and went from 6 to 60 people in 60 days. Like almost all of the others who made the mistake, I severely misjudged the TAM, got my ass handed to me in 2024, and by a stroke of amazing luck the market for growth equity fell apart in 2023 as my business was also falling apart. But many other Founders are not so lucky. They raise when they don’t have to, and trade freedom for the absolute requirement to grow literally forever. They don’t realize they sold their freedom because they only sold 10-15% of their company. But mark my words - you take that money and if you stop growing and you are toast. There is no doing what I did - settling for a much smaller businesses ($35m ARR now) that throws of tons of cash as a consolation prize. If you take that money thinking you will be the next unicorn and you are not, you are relegated to a decade of a low paying job, when you could have been a bit more cautious/responsible/whatever you want to call it and preserved a life-changing outcome for yourself no matter what happened. You only need to get rich once. I’m begging you to maximize the probability of that before you swing for the fences. Just my two cents ✌️

Your best leads are on your website right now…and you’re letting them leave. You can't just spam them in your sleep and expect it to turn into business. But resolving people to the person level and then nurturing those people into becoming leads is something everyone should be doing. We have the technology for it, so why aren’t we? You're just costing yourself money by not checking your anonymous traffic.