Brian Pontarelli is the Founder and CEO of FusionAuth, one of the leading customer identity and access management platforms. FusionAuth allows you to add login, registration, SSO, MFA, and many other useful features to your app.
Over 6,000 customers have signed up for FusionAuth in just six years. To understand his methods, we conducted an exclusive interview with the CEO on August 28th, 2024.
Here are Brian’s seven important lessons on scaling:
1. Be patient
Brian has been an entrepreneur since 2006. He started his first tech company, CleanSpeak, and spent eight years trying to scale it. He and his team tried everything possible but couldn’t get the business past $1,200,000 ARR.
There are several important lessons here. You have to put in the proper effort and not give up too early. At the same time, you have to know when to pivot.
After eight years of work on CleanSpeak, Brian decided that he had to build a new product with a greater scope.
2. Ideate your way to success
Once the team decided that they needed to build a new company, they spent all their time doing it. Brian and his three engineers spent 16 months trying to create a tech product that could scale.
They shipped many things but finally settled on customer login because it was something they needed for their own products. Furthermore, with their technical expertise, they felt they could create a solution that would be the best in the space.
3. Find your growth lever
Once FusionAuth was built, Brian and the team had to figure out how to acquire customers. This is usually the most challenging part for every entrepreneur.
The key acquisition lever that worked was giving away the product for free. This way, all customers could experience the solution at no cost but stick around because the product was good.
FusionAuth grew from 0 to 500 downloads in just three months.
4. Don’t rush to monetize your product
Brian knew that he could monetize the product since so many developers were using it. For one year, they gave FusionAuth away for free and were not making any money.
But during this period, they were talking to customers, adding more features, making the product more robust, and scaling users.
This is interesting because some entrepreneurs might not be patient enough to give a product away for a year while trying to figure out how to monetize. However, if people are using your solution, you can always find a way to monetize it later since there’s demand.
After one year of being free, Brian added upgrade options, and customers started buying. Thus, the acquisition flywheel worked because customers tried FusionAuth for free but then upgraded to get even more value.
5. Be everywhere your customers are
Brian is quite different in his approach to marketing.
Some tech companies only focus on performance marketing, meaning the acquisition method is trackable, and you can measure direct results from the ad spend. Brian, on the other hand, looks at top-line metrics to determine if things are working.
Not all customers have the same buying behavior. Some people click on an ad but then will search for the solution. This is why FusionAuth sponsors targeted newsletters, conferences, and other niche publications to be everywhere their customers are. Most of this marketing will not be performance marketing but still generates results.
Brian looks at overall top-line metrics like website visitors, demo requests, etc. If things are increasing, then marketing is working.
6. Do whatever it takes
Startups are hard. As a founder, your job is to do whatever it takes to succeed.
For example, Brian spent the first three years of FusionAuth doing many different jobs. He coded, did bookkeeping, reviewed legal documents, handled HR, and managed marketing and sales. This is definitely very stressful and hard. We all like to specialize and not spend our time juggling six different jobs.
But the lesson here is to do anything and everything that is required, just like Brian did for three years. Today, FusionAuth has over 6,000 customers and $65,000,000 in venture funding.
7. Understand your deal mechanics
Brian used the revenue from his first tech company, CleanSpeak, to bootstrap FusionAuth for five years. That’s why he didn’t raise venture capital for a long time, but instead raised one massive $65,000,000 round on November 1st, 2023. Thus, he bootstrapped the company for many years and then raised venture capital on favorable terms.
Brian even suggests that founders should raise less money and try to bootstrap their startups for as long as possible. This way, more exits would be profitable for everyone.
We hope you enjoyed this exclusive interview.
Make sure to sign up for FusionAuth so your business can offer convenient and secure login, registration, SSO, and MFA.