StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Oct 18, 2022 · 35m · top-founders

Free Customer Formula: How I grew Expandi from $0 to $7m in 20 months without spending money on ads

Stefan Smulders · 29m spoken Nathan Latka · 57s spoken
0:00 / 0:00

gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

At the Founder 500 conference, Expandi founder Stefan Smulders breaks down the tactical outbound frameworks, inbound SEO strategies, and community playbooks used to scale his bootstrapped SaaS company from $0 to $7 million ARR without spending money on paid advertising.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Nathan as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 0.0 Nathan pushing back 0.0
05100:0010:0020:0030:001:06–4:01 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Expandi's Journey from Zero to Seven Million ARR This segment is a solo keynote presentation where Stefan introduces himself and outlines Expandi's revenue milestones from zero to seven million ARR. Because it is a monologue with no host participation, host-related scores are zero.4:03–11:48 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Pre-Launch Positioning and Beta User Learnings Stefan recounts his pre-launch positioning, scraping AlbaCross users, and realizing through early beta testing that non-marketers were the wrong audience. The presentation format involves no host interaction or adversarial dynamics.11:54–18:28 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Competitor Scraping and LinkedIn Retargeting Playbooks Stefan shares actionable playbooks on competitor Facebook group scraping, comparison pages, and LinkedIn post engagement retargeting. He delivers a practical, highly instructive presentation to the audience without host interruption.18:31–33:09 · Nathan as informed peer 0/10 Inbound Scaling, SEO, and Micro-Influencer Relationships Stefan wraps up his presentation by explaining how relationship building with micro-influencers, SEO optimization, and an exclusive Facebook community drove 90 percent inbound revenue. There is no host cross-examination.1:06–4:01 · Guest teaching 0/10 Expandi's Journey from Zero to Seven Million ARR This segment is a solo keynote presentation where Stefan introduces himself and outlines Expandi's revenue milestones from zero to seven million ARR. Because it is a monologue with no host participation, host-related scores are zero.4:03–11:48 · Guest teaching 0/10 Pre-Launch Positioning and Beta User Learnings Stefan recounts his pre-launch positioning, scraping AlbaCross users, and realizing through early beta testing that non-marketers were the wrong audience. The presentation format involves no host interaction or adversarial dynamics.11:54–18:28 · Guest teaching 0/10 Competitor Scraping and LinkedIn Retargeting Playbooks Stefan shares actionable playbooks on competitor Facebook group scraping, comparison pages, and LinkedIn post engagement retargeting. He delivers a practical, highly instructive presentation to the audience without host interruption.18:31–33:09 · Guest teaching 0/10 Inbound Scaling, SEO, and Micro-Influencer Relationships Stefan wraps up his presentation by explaining how relationship building with micro-influencers, SEO optimization, and an exclusive Facebook community drove 90 percent inbound revenue. There is no host cross-examination.1:06–4:01 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Expandi's Journey from Zero to Seven Million ARR This segment is a solo keynote presentation where Stefan introduces himself and outlines Expandi's revenue milestones from zero to seven million ARR. Because it is a monologue with no host participation, host-related scores are zero.4:03–11:48 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Pre-Launch Positioning and Beta User Learnings Stefan recounts his pre-launch positioning, scraping AlbaCross users, and realizing through early beta testing that non-marketers were the wrong audience. The presentation format involves no host interaction or adversarial dynamics.11:54–18:28 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Competitor Scraping and LinkedIn Retargeting Playbooks Stefan shares actionable playbooks on competitor Facebook group scraping, comparison pages, and LinkedIn post engagement retargeting. He delivers a practical, highly instructive presentation to the audience without host interruption.18:31–33:09 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Inbound Scaling, SEO, and Micro-Influencer Relationships Stefan wraps up his presentation by explaining how relationship building with micro-influencers, SEO optimization, and an exclusive Facebook community drove 90 percent inbound revenue. There is no host cross-examination.1:06–4:01 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Expandi's Journey from Zero to Seven Million ARR This segment is a solo keynote presentation where Stefan introduces himself and outlines Expandi's revenue milestones from zero to seven million ARR. Because it is a monologue with no host participation, host-related scores are zero.4:03–11:48 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Pre-Launch Positioning and Beta User Learnings Stefan recounts his pre-launch positioning, scraping AlbaCross users, and realizing through early beta testing that non-marketers were the wrong audience. The presentation format involves no host interaction or adversarial dynamics.11:54–18:28 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Competitor Scraping and LinkedIn Retargeting Playbooks Stefan shares actionable playbooks on competitor Facebook group scraping, comparison pages, and LinkedIn post engagement retargeting. He delivers a practical, highly instructive presentation to the audience without host interruption.18:31–33:09 · Nathan pushing back 0/10 Inbound Scaling, SEO, and Micro-Influencer Relationships Stefan wraps up his presentation by explaining how relationship building with micro-influencers, SEO optimization, and an exclusive Facebook community drove 90 percent inbound revenue. There is no host cross-examination.

speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Nathan 36.1% · guest 63.9%0:00 · Nathan 36.1% · guest 63.9%3:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%3:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%12:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%12:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%15:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%15:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%18:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%18:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%21:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%21:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%24:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%24:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%27:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%27:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%30:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%30:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%33:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%33:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 100%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 4:50 Critique of Competitor Transparency

Stefan calls out competing LinkedIn automation tools for hiding behind fake avatars and making empty 10X claims without showing users how to get real results.

 Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 0:15 Host Mandate for Real Metrics

In his opening introduction, Nathan asserts strict control over the conference stage by mandating that every presenter show unvarnished revenue graphs and artifacts.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:40 Content Retargeting Strategy Breakdown

Stefan educates the audience on why scraping engagement from viral niche posts delivers vastly superior conversion compared to traditional Sales Navigator cold outreach.

 Nathan holds their own ▶ 0:35 Promoting the Latka SaaS Database

Nathan establishes his platform authority by detailing the extensive filtering tools, revenue metrics, and proprietary data available on getlatka.com.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicNathan as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementNathan pushing backWhy
Expandi's Journey from Zero to Seven Million ARR 0000 This segment is a solo keynote presentation where Stefan introduces himself and outlines Expandi's revenue milestones from zero to seven million ARR. Because it is a monologue with no host participation, host-related scores are zero.
Pre-Launch Positioning and Beta User Learnings 0000 Stefan recounts his pre-launch positioning, scraping AlbaCross users, and realizing through early beta testing that non-marketers were the wrong audience. The presentation format involves no host interaction or adversarial dynamics.
Competitor Scraping and LinkedIn Retargeting Playbooks 0000 Stefan shares actionable playbooks on competitor Facebook group scraping, comparison pages, and LinkedIn post engagement retargeting. He delivers a practical, highly instructive presentation to the audience without host interruption.
Inbound Scaling, SEO, and Micro-Influencer Relationships 0000 Stefan wraps up his presentation by explaining how relationship building with micro-influencers, SEO optimization, and an exclusive Facebook community drove 90 percent inbound revenue. There is no host cross-examination.

Statements from this episode (9)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Expandi hit $1M in revenue within six months of its 2019 launch
“We did a lot of things in distribution, so I tried to wrap up a couple of practical strategies we used, which drove us very easy to run a million in revenue within six months.”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 2:55
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bootstrapped Expandi hit $3.1M ARR in year one and $7M recently
“Our run rate. We hit in our Stripe account mid-November, 2019 at zero dollars. Within one year, we closed at somewhere around 3.1 million. Last year we hit six million in annual run rate, and recently we reached a seven million.”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 3:36
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Expandi funded its public launch by pre-selling $50K to 60 beta users
“From there on we thought maybe it's a good idea to approach all these 160 Better users we had to do them an offer, an annual offer, and with our agency experiences, we could help them with designing kind of a sequences, so that they could get results, and 60 o…”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 10:21
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Scraping competitor Facebook groups yielded a 72% LinkedIn connection acceptance rate
“We scraped these Facebook groups. I think at that time point we used Phantombuster to gather these emails and convert them into LinkedIn profiles. And then we uploaded that CSV file into Expondi. These are results of that specific campaign. And with a more tha…”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 13:03
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Expandi reached $1M ARR relying solely on manual content distribution, ignoring SEO
“We invested a lot in manual content distribution, and up towards the one million in annual run rate, we did not even optimize any article in terms of a SEO.”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 18:14
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Expandi reached 50,000 to 60,000 unique monthly website visitors within one year
“At a certain point, we reached about 50, 60 K unique website visitors per month, and I think that was After a year. Something like that.”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 20:12
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Smulders claims 90% of Expandi's revenue is generated from inbound leads
“I think 90% of all our revenue came from inbound.”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 20:40
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Targeting LinkedIn post engagers yields a 70% to 75% connection acceptance rate
“And on average if you decide to use it and want to follow up people on LinkedIn with this strategy it still achieves Kind of a 70, 75% acceptance rate.”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 28:27
Disclosure
Expandi artificially boosted its content reach by self-upvoting articles using VPNs
“And we used different VPNs to access it through different IPs and upvote all these articles to get a much more reach.”
Stefan Smulders Oct 18, 2022 ▶ 30:05
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 2,600 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more