Meet the Makers February 2021: Success Stories You’ll Love

What’s good, Sumo-lings?! Welcome back to our Meet the Makers series, where we round up our favorite Marketplace success stories and talk to the awesome founders behind some of your favorite tools.

If you don’t know much about the AppSumo Marketplace, you’re in for a real treat. The Marketplace is a hustling, bustling, collaborative community where creators seamlessly launch and sell their best digital downloads, courses, and apps to fellow entrepreneurs. Want in on the action? Submit your product here!

It’s February, which means love is in the air and we all want to feel that spark of connection.

Scroll down to read some of the best Marketplace Case Study stories, hear about their launches, and learn their tips for success!

1. TabsFolders

What It Does:

TabsFolders allows you to capture, organize, and share your browser tabs at ten times the speed of other tools.

My favorite thing has definitely been having access to an active user base that supports the early stage with comments and discussions, and are engaged in improving the product.

Meet Kamil:

I’m Kamil and I am the co-founder of TabsFolders.

We’re currently growing organically and cash flow positive. We’re keeping the team at a level that ensures we stay cash flow positive, but definitely looking to expand in the near future. We launched the MVP in 2015 and have been improving TabsFolders one feature at a time. The landscape has changed since 2015, and therefore we have many improvements and enhancements planned to make TabsFolders the most efficient way to browse the web!

How did you find out about the AppSumo Marketplace?

Our colleague, Chris, recommended that we get on the platform.

Tell us about your launch! Any challenges?

The launch process was very simple. It was a very intuitive and clear process with great instructions from the AppSumo team.

What value did you receive from your promotion?

We just started a month ago, so we believe that the value will grow. We already have many lifetime deal purchasers, great reviews, and amazing questions from Sumo-lings. The questions and comments give us the end-user perspective for new features and improvements.

What advice would you give to anyone interested in the Marketplace, so they can get the most of their launch?

I would suggest getting graphical assets and marketing copy unified across AppSumo and other web properties. Also, I’d recommend posting on Product Hunt, G2, etc. ahead of the launch, so that users see third-party proof. It’s also really helpful to prepare a marketing campaign to boost sales.

What’s been your favorite thing about launching with us?

My favorite thing has definitely been having access to an active user base that supports the early stage with comments and discussions, and are engaged in improving the product.

What’s your company vision? Tell us what’s next for you!

We are planning to expand team features for easier sharing and collaborating with TabsFolders, as well as webhook integrations so users can enhance TabsFolders by merging with other tools!

2. CLOSEM

What It Does:

CLOSEM is a simple contact management system combined with a powerful messaging platform that automates follow-up with leads, prospects, and customers to maximize engagement and sales.

We wear being in the Marketplace as a badge of honor.

Meet Richard and Laura:

I’m Richard Miles, and together with my partner Laura Betterly, we are the two co-founders of CLOSEM.

We launched in 2020. There’s nothing like launching a startup in the midst of a global pandemic! We’re a small team of scrappy serial entrepreneurs and this is not our first startup. Laura and I first met in the middle of the dot-com era. We worked together to launch the first MP3 player that allowed users to digitally “scratch” two MP3 files called PCDJ, which had over 8,000,000 downloads in a few short months.

My first startup was sold to a Fortune 100 company, and another went public in 2000. My last business was sold to an investor group in 2003. Since then, I’ve worked as CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters and lived in Africa for eight years before returning to the US and starting CLOSEM with Laura. Laura started InTouch Media Group, which went public in 2005. A true visionary, Laura saw the intersection of the internet and mobile and is the author of Mobile Local Fusion, an information product that taught local optimization to over 30,000 students.

How did you find out about the AppSumo Marketplace?

We have both been Sumo-lings for years. Between the two of us, we have bought about 100 products on the platform. And we still use most of them! We first heard about the Marketplace right around the time we actually launched.

Without the Marketplace exposure, I truly doubt we would have users ranging from other software developers to someone literally selling chameleons online.

Tell us about your launch! Any challenges?

Getting on the Marketplace was first and foremost real validation for us. It’s one thing to sell a product to users who like it—it’s another to offer it to people who look at apps like ours for a living and have it be accepted. We wear being in the Marketplace as a badge of honor. It’s a pretty easy process to get on the Marketplace, but the challenges are in responding to questions on a timely basis.

What value did you receive from your promotion?

We were able to expose our product to a wide audience of users quickly—with zero advertising expense!— which gave us valuable insight into how people are using the platform. It also gave us incredibly useful feedback which has helped us in developing our next version. Without the Marketplace exposure, I truly doubt we would have users ranging from other software developers to someone literally selling chameleons online.

What advice would you give to anyone interested in the Marketplace, so they can get the most of their launch?

Be ready to respond to feedback and criticism quickly and with a smile. Sumo-lings are by and large friendly but need care and careful feeding. And a small few do have sharp teeth.

What’s been your favorite thing about launching with us?

The incredible feedback and love we’ve gotten from users! It has been truly heartwarming to hear from users how our product has helped them grow their businesses, how it has solved problems for them, and how easy it is to use. The assistance we’ve gotten from the Marketplace team has been supportive and great.

What’s your company vision? Tell us what’s next for you!

Laura and I are absolutely committed to our mission, which is to have satisfied customers. Period. We know that having people who use our product and get value out of it will lead to other great things. We are quickly iterating and adding new features, and have recently tripled the size of our development team to more rapidly get new features to market. Plus, we have an incredible new feature coming out mid-year that will be a breakthrough in cold prospect activation that we can’t wait to introduce! Not to mention, at some point, we’d like to make some money.

3. LinkHelp

What It Does:

LinkHelp is a LinkedIn tool for lead generation, data extraction, and marketing automation.

AppSumo gave us a better strategic vision for our future journey.

Meet Thomas:

My name is Thomas and I’m the co-founder of LinkHelp.

LinkHelp launched in September with a team of six people. In the beginning, LinkHelp was only created to serve our company’s needs in terms of marketing, but finally, we decided to launch it for the public because people were curious about our tool.

How did you find out about the AppSumo Marketplace?

We heard about AppSumo from social media and we fell in love with the Sumo-lings!

Tell us about your launch! Any challenges?

Besides the preparation work to get featured on AppSumo, it was pretty fast and smooth. We didn’t face any particular difficulties. The AppSumo team was always there to advise us. Thanks so much for that!

What value did you receive from your promotion?

We wanted to get users’ feedback to prioritize the updates of our roadmap. The best value that we got was the awesome feedback and advice on what we should improve and update. AppSumo gave us a better strategic vision for our future journey. Getting positive user reviews is also the best fuel that we could get in a launching season.

What advice would you give to anyone interested in the Marketplace, so they can get the most of their launch?

The recipe for a successful launch is writing a great product description and providing the best pictures to showcase your product. Once your product is featured on AppSumo, you should try your best to get as many 5-star reviews as soon as possible. So contact your clients! Finally, entertaining your future clients by answering their questions in the comment section is also very important.

What’s been your favorite thing about launching with us?

The best part about launching on AppSumo has been the exposure to a sizable amount of Sumo-lings, who gave us the best feedback to improve LinkHelp.

What’s your company vision? Tell us what’s next for you!

Our goals are to release more crazy features, educate our users on how to effectively use LinkHelp to get more results, hire new team members, and get more and more Sumo-lings to buy our product!

4. Copysmith

What It Does:

Copysmith uses cutting-edge AI to brainstorm all types of content, including product descriptions, ads, metatags, taglines, and much more.

The AppSumo team is amazing, and the support and feedback from the community has been invaluable!

Meet Jasmine:

I’m Jasmine, the CEO and co-founder of Copysmith.

We launched publicly on Oct 26, 2020, and our AppSumo page went live just a few weeks later on Nov 12, 2020. I’m not sure if that’s a record in terms of turnaround—especially as the youngest company to go live on AppSumo, but it’s all thanks to the amazing coordination of the AppSumo team!

How did you find out about the AppSumo Marketplace?

Lots of our early customers asked for us to go on AppSumo, and then someone from the team reached out to us.

Tell us about your launch! Any challenges?

It was definitely rocky. We got lots of questions within the first few hours about our pricing structure and quickly realized we need to improve our communications and presentation of our product. But after that first week where we quickly took into account the feedback from Sumo-lings, it’s been smooth sailing!

What value did you receive from your promotion?

We’ve gotten amazing feedback on pricing structure and even the UX of Copysmith! The initial capital will allow us to scale up our team on product to improve Copysmith even more.

What advice would you give to anyone interested in the Marketplace, so they can get the most of their launch?

1. Triple-check your language before your deal goes live.

2. Email everyone who hasn’t logged into your product for a while about the deal.

What’s been your favorite thing about launching with us?

The AppSumo team is amazing, and the support and feedback from the community has been invaluable!

What’s your company vision? Tell us what’s next for you!

We’ve just hired two more developers, and are actively recruiting a product manager. We have tons of exciting features on the horizon, from a wider variety of templates to more powerful integrations and functionality with our existing templates.

5. GrowthClub

What It Does:

GrowthClub is a video-call-based community of bootstrappers. It’s a place to exchange growth hacks and get the emotional support you need to build your side hustle via 1-on-1 video calls.

The acquisition has become so much easier and we’ve never seen growth like that at GrowthClub. I think both the AppSumo brand and the lifetime deal help a lot here.

Meet Maxim:

I am Maxim, a digital nomad and the co-founder at GrowthClub.

GrowthClub actually started as a side project back in October 2019, where we would organize weekly peer coaching meetings with friends. We would coach each other on business and life topics. It was very useful to zoom out of the daily grind and strategize together, getting feedback and fresh perspectives on our challenges from peers. We noticed that this was particularly useful for founders—even when you have a co-founder, you always need diverse perspectives and advice. That’s how GrowthClub came to life: online weekly 1-on-1 peer support calls with founders from all around the world.

I started working on GrowthClub full-time in February 2020 together with my co-founder, Dima, who is our CMO. Later, we were joined by Aurora, our community manager. We launched in April 2020 on ProductHunt and in a couple of weeks secured our first 10 paying customers and a seed funding. Growing a paid community wasn’t easy with a $50 per month membership. We used a combination of content marketing, Linkedin outreach, and Twitter Ads.

How did you find out about the AppSumo Marketplace?

The cool thing about being a co-founder at GrowthClub is that I get to know personally all our customers, including so many amazing founders from around the world. One of them mentioned that her friend raised a mini-seed round via AppSumo. AppSumo sounded so cool to us that we applied immediately for the main listing. We didn’t get in (yet, haha!); however, the AppSumo team invited us later to get featured on the Marketplace, which we gladly accepted.

Tell us about your launch! Any challenges?

The process was quite straightforward. We just had to create a listing for our product with all the pictures and promotional text, and the AppSumo team published it for us. Making a good cover banner took the most time, but thanks to my designer friend, we were able to put something professional out.

As we personally onboarded every founder via 30-min call, the main challenge was finding the time to keep developing the platform while onboarding all these amazing founders. Our community manager, Aurora, helped us a great ton here.

What value did you receive from your promotion?

Members and revenue! It was hard acquiring members on our own. With the AppSumo promotion that we launched in November, we went from $1,200.00 of revenue in October to $4,515.00 in December. Members are essential for a community product like ours: we went from 30 to 100+ onboarded members in just two months, which gives us the required critical mass for the community to thrive.

What advice would you give to anyone interested in the Marketplace, so they can get the most of their launch?

Get ready to promote the campaign yourself. Unlike the Select listings, AppSumo doesn’t promote your product as actively when you’re on the Marketplace. It helped us a lot to share the launch in relevant Facebook and Slack groups.

What’s been your favorite thing about launching with us?

The acquisition has become so much easier and we’ve never seen growth like that at GrowthClub. I think both the AppSumo brand and the lifetime deal help a lot here.

What’s your company vision? Tell us what’s next for you!

Currently, GrowthClub is only for solo early-stage founders, but in the future, we plan to expand. Pretty much any overachiever would greatly benefit from the quality peer support that we can provide: freelancers, salespeople, entrepreneurs, etc. GrowthClub also would be quite useful for businesses wishing to increase their employee satisfaction and professional growth.

Conclusion

Thank you to all the great creators and founders for taking the time to catch up with us and sharing your journeys! We’re so stoked to watch your businesses grow and flourish!

Caught the entrepreneur bug? Ready to bring one of your cool ideas to life?

Our community of hustlers and leaders can’t wait to see what you create. Submit your product to the AppSumo Marketplace today!

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