Break all the rulebooks: How ActiveCampaign reached $70M in ARR

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we speak with Jason VandeBoom, Founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign about all the unusual things he has done to reach $70M in ARR and counting.

A builder and maker of things from an early age, young Jason thought that the best way to cater for that was to attend Fine Arts school. That pursuit brought him to Chicago. However, to pay for Arts school he started doing consulting on the side. He ended up packaging it into an on-premise solution, which he sold for the good part of the following decade, abandoning the pursuit of the fine arts and establishing himself as a tech entrepreneur. In 2013 he began a transition into building a cloud based customer experience automation platform. By 2016, Jason was employing around 20 people and started growing the company.

Three years later the numbers speak for themselves - headcount is nearing 550, the company has 80,000 customers and is on a healthy growth trajectory, currently earning 70M in ARR. What is not so obvious is how Jason got there. Breaking a lot of hard SaaS rules and doing things that on paper made little sense in scaling but in fact have contributed massively to the success of the company, has been the heart of it.

Listen on to hear:

• An example of an unscalable tactic, many would consider toxic to the bottom line
• Active campaign’s unusual way of doing customer research
• How they break the rules of user conferences

Jason VandeBoom is one of many excellent speakers we will host at SaaStock19 in Dublin this October that will be sharing unusual and not often talked about ways to grow. We have over 160 speakers that will be split between 5 stages, including a Podcast stage where your favorite podcasts such as The Top, The Growth Marketing Podcast, Inside Intercom, The SaaS Revolution Show and others will be recording live episodes that you can listen in on. That is just one small part of what you get with your SaaStock ticket so go ahead and grab one now at the best possible price.

 

 

 

Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 

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