In the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, Alex Theuma is joined by Patrick Barnes, CEO, and Co-founder of Advocately. The SaaS company automates how B2B SaaS companies build better relationships with their customers. Born and raised in Australia, Patrick has lived in Singapore for the past 5 years, where he moved when he was 23.

While he was working for TradeGecko, he noticed that customer reviews and user-generated content had a growing impact on buying decisions. Could there be a way to scale and automate how they were generated? Just six weeks before SaaStock 2016, Patrick and co-founder Lachlan Priest launched Advocately, a new category company, which they believed was the way.

Building SaaS companies is difficult enough, so why would anyone willingly attempt to do it while creating a new category? Patrick and Lachlan believed strongly in the power of customers serving as advocates, and the possibility to automated advocate marketing, not to try it.

Chewing through savings and relying on just a few friends as customers wasn’t easy at the start. A lack of a GTM strategy was frustrating. A year later, he is in a much better place – fewer savings in the bank but a successful GTM strategy that Advocately is following. The company just reached $7K MRR, a more than 100% increase of where it was just three months ago. Two more people have joined the team, and Patrick even pays himself a salary.

Listen to the episode to learn from the journey of getting to $7K MRR and hear the answers to these key questions:

  • How did they build a list of perfect customers?
  • Why did they decide to give their product for free?
  • What are the tools they use to get and segment potential customers and sequence emails?
  • When is the right moment to upsell a customer?
  • Why should companies at a similar stage not get hung up on price?

*Bonus: How Patrick stays positive and doesn’t succumb to the tiredness that comes with being at an event like SaaStock.

To find more information about Advocately go to Advocate.ly or send an email to patrick@advocate.ly.