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📥 This Tool For Remote Teams Made $62,000 Last Month: Here's How

Learn the exact growth strategies Karma used to get their first few sales and beyond

Hi everyone 🤝 

This is Cameron from growtharchive.xyz 📥

Every week, I highlight up-and-coming projects and successful startups' early growth strategies that worked, as well as the challenges they faced when making their first sales and beyond.

This Week's Featured Case Study📈

True bonding for remote teams. Build stronger, happier teams. Set goals, track performance, and reward excellence on Slack.

Project Launched: 2020
Founder: Stas Kulesh
MRR: $62,000 (updated September 20, 2023)

How did you come up with the idea of Karma Bot?

“The idea for Karma originated from our own experiences in managing remote teams at our digital studio, Sliday. We recognized a gap in the market for a tool that could effectively facilitate peer recognition and feedback, especially in remote work environments.

Initially, Karma was an internal tool that we developed to enhance our own team's morale and performance. After a successful launch on Product Hunt, we realized that other companies had a similar need for such a tool, which led to the evolution of Karma into a standalone product”

How did Karma Bot get its first profitable customers?

“Karma's first profitable customers came organically. Initially, Karma bot was an internal tool we built for our own digital studio, Sliday. After we launched it on Product Hunt, we discovered other people were interested in using it as well. However, for about a year, Karma was making less than $200 per month, which didn't motivate us to invest substantial resources into it. But as more customers started asking for features and updates, we started paying more attention to it.

We also realized that our customer base was not just startups and small communities who were early adopters of Slack, but also larger enterprises. This led us to rework our pricing model and product, and start actively tracking important metrics. Our monthly revenue grew from $156 in January 2018 to $13,361 in January 2019.”

What have you struggled with when building Karma Bot so far, and how has this shaped your business?

“One of the biggest struggles we faced while building Karma was identifying and understanding our user base. Initially, we thought our primary users would be regular team members who would enjoy the fun and game-like elements of Karma.

It took us a while to realize that the actual paying customers were not the regular team members, but team owners such as top management, CEOs, founders, and people culture specialists. They used Karma bot for better control and transparency, to sift through daily chat noise, track micro-feedback, record performance notes, and spread team appreciation.”

What gives Karma Bot that unfair advantage over new entrants into the market?

"Our unfair advantage with Karma lies in several areas:

1. First-Mover Advantage: Karma was one of the earliest entrants in the market for in-chat peer recognition and engagement systems. This early entry allowed us to understand the needs of our customers, fine-tune our product, and establish a strong presence in the market before many competitors even entered the field.

2. Strong User Base: Over time, we have built a loyal user base of over 6,000 weekly users and 90 paying companies. This not only provides us with a steady revenue stream but also a rich source of feedback and insights that help us continually improve and adapt our product to meet changing needs.

3. Partnerships: Our partnership with Microsoft has given us a significant boost in user acquisition. Microsoft paid us to develop Karma for their Microsoft Teams platform and continues to help us test and launch our product. This gives us access to a vast potential user base of mostly enterprise customers.

4. Comprehensive Feature Set: Unlike many new entrants who may offer basic features, Karma provides a comprehensive suite of features including micro-feedback, performance tracking, instant and long-term rewards, and actionable HR insights. This makes our product a one-stop solution for teams looking to improve their culture and performance.

5. Continuous Improvement: We have a culture of continuous learning and improvement. We constantly engage with our customers, learn from their feedback, and make improvements to our product. This ensures that our product stays relevant and valuable to our customers in the long run.

6. Team Expertise: Our team brings together a unique blend of skills and experiences in design, development, sales, and marketing. This enables us to tackle challenges from multiple angles and come up with innovative solutions.

What is your main growth strategy for Karma Bot going forward?

Our main growth strategy going forward is to continue refining and improving our product based on customer feedback and needs. We believe in the power of organic growth driven by a strong product-market fit. We will continue to engage with our users, understand their needs, and adapt our product to provide the best possible solution for them. This involves regular updates, new features, and constant iterations on our existing services.

Additionally, we plan to leverage partnerships, like the one we have with Microsoft, to expand our reach and attract larger enterprise clients. We will also focus on optimizing our presence in various app marketplaces and enhancing our SEO efforts to reach a wider audience.

Lastly, we will continue to foster a community around our product. This includes maintaining active social media accounts, running a blog with valuable content, and potentially hosting webinars or online events. By doing this, we aim to position Karma as not just a tool, but a thought leader in the space of team engagement and recognition.

This Twitter Tool Guarantees Growth🚀

I recently stumbled upon TweetPeek, a Twitter tool designed to effortlessly increase your follower count.

You might be wondering if it's possible to gain real followers automatically without bots.

With TweetPeek, there are no bots or shady practices involved.

Here's how it works:

  1. Select your niche: Choose the keywords and locations that match your interests and target audience.

  1. Automated Growth: TweetPeek then follows 50 users a day in this niche who are likely to follow you back, and it gives them 24 hours to follow you back.


    If they don't follow back, it automatically unfollows them.

While some may question this approach, it's a game-changer for personal and business brands with under 300 followers and also for those who want to connect with new users daily.

It's your ticket to guaranteed growth within your target audience.

Just look at my results so far:

In just two weeks, I gained an impressive 242 new targeted followers; that's a consistent increase of 10–20 new followers daily. I even hit 60+ in one day and gained a couple of newsletter subscribers.

The goal is to get the follow back so that you can connect with every new targeted follower in the DM’s without hitting their "message requests" tab when they don't follow you back.

TweetPeek also has a couple more features:

  1. SmartNudges:

    • SmartNudges is designed to boost interaction by generating a targeted comment on a user's tweet with AI. While I personally prefer crafting my own comments and tweets, this feature is perfect for those looking for a time-saving option or ideas they can use to respond to a comment.

  2. SmartPeek:

    • If you come across an account that you find interesting, you can take a sneak peek at the user's overall profile before hitting that 'Follow' button.

So, if you are also looking for something to help you connect with 10+ targeted users a day without hitting the message requests tab, this is for you.

And here's a little bonus: Use the code 'growtharchive.xyz' at checkout to enjoy a 10% discount

How You Can Save 2000+ Hours A Year👨‍💻

Have you considered delegating tasks?

I believe in delegating tasks like outreach and admin as early on as possible to part-time virtual assistants. It allows me to invest more time in creating valuable content for my newsletter and growing my agency.

In the interview below, we dive into some common questions with the owner of a $1 million/year business who expertly delegates to 10 virtual assistants:

  • Get the indications that made Casey realize he needed a VA.

  • The specific tasks Casey delegated to his VA's

  • How to communicate with your VA on a daily basis

  • Casey delegated tasks effectively.

  • The tools and strategies Casey uses to enhance the VA's productivity

  • Challenges faced with his VA's

  • How VA’s impacted his overall business

Thank you for reading and supporting the Growth Archive.

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See you next week!

Cameron Scully (@cameronscully_)

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