How Startups Get
Their First Customers

Didomi is a Paris-based consent management platform that processes roughly 2% of global web traffic and billions of consent decisions monthly for enterprise customers like Bloomberg, Sky, and Adyen. The company grew from sub-€300k angel funding to €34m Series B in 2021, eventually reaching $40-60m ARR across 3,500 customers with fewer than 200 employees. In April 2025, Marlin Equity Partners took majority control and Didomi acquired both Addingwell and Sourcepoint, consolidating the compliance management market.

Roy and Ryan Seiders bootstrapped YETI by solving a personal pain point—building a high-end cooler that wouldn't break, initially targeting serious outdoorsmen through small independent retailers rather than major chains. The business nearly collapsed when their only manufacturing partner was suddenly lost, but the brothers survived and eventually discovered that a simple $30 stainless-steel cup became the product that transformed YETI from a niche brand into a mass-market status symbol.

Poppi is a beverage company founded by Allison Ellsworth. The startup was featured in an episode of My First Million podcast hosted by Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, but specific traction metrics and business details are not provided in this source material.

JJELLYFISH is an enterprise sales consulting firm co-founded by Jen Abel, who is recognized as a leading practitioner in enterprise sales. The company specializes in helping businesses close $100K-$1M+ deals through a detailed 15-step sales cycle methodology that goes beyond traditional CRM pipeline models.

Owner is a $100M+ vertical SaaS company serving the restaurant industry that underwent a major transformation to make AI the core of their platform. In just two years, they grew their AI-first customer base from 0% to 83%, requiring a complete rethink of pricing, sales, and onboarding. The company learned critical lessons about AI adoption through customer churn and simplified their approach to focus on delivering tangible results for small business owners.

Templafy, founded by Christian Lund and a co-founder, grew from an on-premise document business into an eight-figure SaaS company by pioneering an unconventional enterprise sales approach: selling domain expertise and point of view before the product even existed. The founders closed their first Big Four accounting firm customer by co-creating the product with them, then scaled by answering every pilot request with "yes, if" while setting strict proof criteria upfront, effectively disqualifying poor-fit prospects and turning trials into company-wide deals. The company now operates with hundreds of employees and is rebuilding again to capitalize on the AI shift.