Founder-Led Marketing - Selling $30 Million of Software Using LinkedIn (w/ Baz Furby) | DN #4

Hi, and a huge welcome to you, my lovely listener. So glad you're here. Today, you're joining me for a chat with Bas. Bas Building Ghost. And I think you have been in B2B software for a very long time. What's your... So first of all, thanks for coming. And maybe how did you end up in B2B software in the first place? Yeah, well, it's a letter to be here. So thanks for having me on. Yeah, I mean, it's scary to say that I've been in B2B software SaaS for a very long time. It's true, though. I think I moved to London in 2009 and started a software company back then. So that dates me to, you know, almost 15 years ago, 16 years ago, which is quite scary to think. But yeah, so my background is SaaS. I've worked most of my career in the more kind of corporate enterprise end of software. Worked for a number of different businesses across social listening and analytics, e-commerce. Spent a couple of years working in crypto and then saved myself and came back into SaaS and the bootstrapped end of software sales that I'm in now. Yeah, that's really interesting. And you're really, I think it's a topic that a lot of people struggle with, especially after they have launched their first software product. Like how do I actually now get customers and users? Hopefully you have a great product, but what's the secret? How do you do that? Well, I think the world has changed when it comes to software. Like if we think of the software journey from 20 years ago you know early software businesses they used to raise a ton of money and as a result of raising a ton of money you'd get developers to go and build something for 6 12 24 months and build a product you'd take that to market and because you've raised tons of money you've still got you know that leverage there to then go away and do large-scale marketing campaigns and you would buy advertising ads you know all the different kind of marketing channels, build an email list, you do webinars, you go to conferences, and all of that stuff burns through cash. We're in a different place in software today. There might have just been 10 or 15 different products that do a certain thing. Now, if you look at any subsector of SaaS, there's hundreds, if not thousands of people doing the same thing. And a lot of them are smaller businesses, which are probably going down a different route. There's a huge amount of business now, software businesses that are starting through that bootstraps approach. Even Vibe Coded products which are coming to market where people are doing it in their spare time in their bedroom. So the world has completely changed as to how you get clients because that enterprise world of building those. giant software businesses is fading and it's a whole new market now of new products coming through so the way that i've kind of thought about this and the way that i've certainly gone to market is founder-led marketing and building a profile and engaging with people across your space is one of the most effective ways that any individual can take their product to market and that's the basis of what ghost, which we'll get into is built around is really trying to build a profile up, engage with the right people and, and, and reach out to them through outbound. Yeah, I didn't, I think, if I think especially about this, like, I would say in the hacker space, I think that that's kind of one of the, I would say one of the categories where this has been pioneered because the people obviously do everything themselves. And I feel like Peter Levitz a while ago, he said, I realized with AI coming up, I have to get famous. And I feel like it's a bit of a follow up for like, if you're not like, maybe it's different for big corporate CEO, but if you're like small startup CEO, I feel you have to kind of, your market, you are kind of a public profile for your company now, and you have to do the marketing. Do you agree to that? Yeah, I think the founder and assigned people within their team, if they have a small team, there's huge value in those people having their own distribution or building their profile out. And I think that's one of the most interesting things in this space is there's founders and small teams that are building a platform which actually outweighs and gives larger reach than some of the great big corporates are getting with their own. you know, big marketing spend, because paid channels, you know, depending how big your budget is, you can only get so far, you can only reach so many people when you're paying for that. But if you build and then own your audience, there's just such a better opportunity there, because you're building trust and a profile, and then winning that business all at the same time. And those three things really kind of interlock. So there's a huge, huge opportunity for anyone that's launching their own SaaS. through that founder-led approach. And you mentioned AI. I mean, that's one of the things about kind of personal brand is that you get to talk to people, you know, you kind of put your own name behind it. I think it's fine to have software that automates some of your activity, but there's conversations like this are so much more valuable. The meetings that you have subsequently, so much more valuable. I think there's a... an opportunity around AI, but then there's an even greater opportunity actually people willing to put their face behind it and kind of talk to their solution and how they solve things in the market. And I think that's actually a huge advantage with webcoding tools that we have now. So people can put out a really simple product really fast. And then you're actually very early stuck with the challenge of getting users and somehow making it visible. And I think that's like A lot of people with a tech background at least, it's something they have to learn. How to do these things. And when you start from zero, how would you start? Yes, good question. I mean, I've been there with several startups. And the very first thing, I think, before you even build a product is to start to understand who the customer will be. I don't think there's any point building something where there's not a need. First, you've got to do your research and understand. what pain point you're going to be solving for which individuals or which businesses. So I specialize in the B2B environment. And the biggest thing that I think a founder can do during that process is to really deep dive into their ideal customer profile. So you start to understand who that business is or who those individuals are that you want to be selling to. what business they're in and how they deliver services to their clients and then specifically what pain points they have. Once we can discover what pain points those people have and how then you solve them, you've got a really good kind of painting, a good picture of the persona that you're trying to do business with. So that's all around the ICP, ideal customer profile. And then obviously you can attach strategy around that, around what your pricing is and how you reach those people. Ghost and where we fit in is very much around the next step. Once you've identified your ideal customer profile, how do you spark up conversations with those people? And really the premise of the solution that I've built is based on quite simply the strategy that's always worked for me in a B2B sales environment, which is first of all, understanding the ICP and creating really good content that talks to their pain points and how you solve them. So content is at the kind of first point. The second one is sparking up conversations through engagement. So if you can see conversations happening in the market, whether that be on Twitter or LinkedIn, and you can engage thoughtfully and add, you know, contribute thoughtful information or opinions or guidance to those people through engagement, that's obviously really valuable. And then the final point is Finding the right opportunity to start the conversation through DMs where they might have shown intent and you can reach out to them and say, hey, we provide this service. I saw you might be looking for it. How can we help? So we've tried to build a solution that really serves those three kind of core areas. And we do that predominantly on LinkedIn. And yeah, we can get a bit more into that. Yeah, I think that's a great topic. So let's imagine I'm just a very early stage founder. I'm just starting out, you know, like maybe in the beginning, I basically shout into the void, right? So this is the very like the zero from zero to I think growth on social networks are different, right? From zero to 100, just different. Or maybe from zero to 500, it's just I would say a real grind. Like every step is hard. And then like, I'm not sure how it's like on LinkedIn. I know for TwitterX, I can say like, it starts to change really around 2K probably. Like then you're not shouting into the void at this extreme anymore, but it's really like you can just post and you actually get an interaction. What's your feeling? How do you get there basically? I mean, you have done it before. Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, I talk predominantly about LinkedIn because that's the business to business environment where we've certainly built the foundations of our business and it's where our solution works and it's where we help our clients. With LinkedIn, the numbers necessarily don't necessarily mean so much because the momentum is really behind the conversations that you're having. And to put some examples of that, in... um january so the month that's just passed my own personal linkedin profile i made 40 posts but actually and that might get maybe 500 to a thousand impressions per post so that's giving me some reach it's giving me some visibility but what you can't see is behind the scenes i've identified and tracked my competition i've found conversations that individuals are having with my competition I've added 500 of those people into a contact list and outreach to them. 250 or so have actually accepted my invite and then I've had 90 replies. So it's 90 replies in a single month that's led to 30 or 40 meetings. So behind the scenes my profile and my posts are only part of the story because what I've built in the background is a system where I'm capturing intent on my competition's products and then I'm positioning myself or my offering as a solution. And that's exactly what we help our customers do. You know, we might be a SaaS project management tool or some other kind of solution out there. If you can find your competition and you can find people talking to them, there's a massive untapped opportunity that will help you get clients, whether your profile is... flying and viral or not. Yeah, that's really interesting, I think. And I think it's also interesting, right? So you say you have basically one of six contacts that you reached out to basically reprise to the messages. If you compare that to like classic cold calling or something, I think one in 10 usually is good. So these numbers actually sound quite good for cold outreach. Yeah, it's the massive difference. And the thing that I noticed is I I have always worked in sales and I've always used some level of automation tools. I was using Drupify back in my sales role that I was working at a couple of years ago and I would get something like a two or a three percent response rate because you start the process by building a list based on job titles and then you outreach to people and hope they connect. But the reality of LinkedIn is that most people are not as active. targeting based purely on a list is kind of hoping and spraying the way that i built ghost now is much more around using intent as a signal to outreach to people so if i'm outreaching somebody who was talking to um dripify which is a competitor of mine if i reach out to somebody that's talking to dripify last week and say ghost does a better job would you be interested in talking like it makes a lot more sense. That person was active talking about a pain point or a position or product in the market. And I've reached out to them timely, relevant about my solution. So that works really well. Just to put that kind of client example to that, I'm working with a project management tool that works with marketing agencies. So they find influences in the marketing agency growth space. So this is people like Jordan Platten, who's a YouTube profile, but he helps marketing agencies grow. So the SaaS company I'm working with reaches out to the people that are talking to Jordan. And because those people are looking to grow their marketing agency, they're interested in the project management tools and tools that can help them grow. So they're taking a signal, reaching out with a relevant message and getting great response rates because it's timely. You're finding people in the market that are kind of looking for help in one shape or another. And it's so what I'm also interested in, I mean, you're both on X and I think on LinkedIn, right? So if you just have you ever tried to compare them like for business outreach, how I would ask how far superior is LinkedIn? I think it's you are having better results there, right? Yeah, I would say for B2B outreach. LinkedIn is the killer is there's just so many people there as long as it's Yeah, B2C doesn't work so well on LinkedIn because it's just not relevant But B2B where you're talking about kind of professional Businesses marketing say marketing agencies consultants SAS, you know all those professional services Types of solutions. You've just got a global audience who are If you're using the right signals, active and using the platform and you get 100% deliverability. Whereas if you are trying to send cold emails to like a list of marketing agencies, you know, the data is always out a day, your emails go into spam, all these types of things. Whereas LinkedIn is just like 100% deliverability. If you can choose a timely message. and optimize for that intent signal, you just get incredible results. Yeah, and it's interesting. Now, also talking about it, I think at least also in the, I would say, in the more indie hacker space that I'm following a lot in the builder space, there's a lot of discussion around do paid ads pay, basically. And I've said, especially when budget is tight, you would always advocate for kind of... LinkedIn outreach or something like that. How do you feel? How different is it actually? How much better is it working? And also maybe actually where does your company fit in basically if a founder needs help? Yeah, sure. That's a good question. I mean, I experiment with ads across a whole range of different businesses that I've worked at. And I think if you have big budgets, ads are definitely part of that budget. But I think if you're a smaller startup, SaaS or agency or something along those lines. Ads are just kind of spray and hope. They really are, unless you've got some incredible data that maybe you're able to kind of capture and build around. But to be able to do that level of targeting and everything, you're going to have an agency, you're going to be spending five grand a month. Where Ghost fits in is it's like $129 per month and you can hit. 500 people a month with messages through LinkedIn around very specific intent signals. So as I said, like I send 500, get 250 people into my network, getting close to 100 people have conversations with me for, you know, that very, very, very, very small cost. So I think comparable to ads, it's just a no brainer, like you should be doing outreach first. using that as a sales initiative. Yeah, and I believe especially really early on, I mean, you need to talk to these customers anyway. I mean, you don't want anonymous customers on your system. So that's what I would think. You want to talk to them. You want to understand how they're using it, what they like, what they don't like, all these kinds of things. So it's probably a lot easier with kind of when you initiate the contact via network. Yeah, I think that's a really good point you make actually around conversation. Because I don't think pitching and going in for a hard sell is the best way of doing outreach. I think conversational, I think I call it social selling, but conversational selling where you drop in and ask questions about a certain topic and see how you can help. Like a more consultative approach where you ask what you're struggling with right now around a certain topic. Are you exploring this type of thing? If you can spark up a conversation and get on a call, the relationship one-to-one is going to be so much more valuable. You can have great visibility for ads, but there's the conversations you have one-to-one. I mean, some of the people that I've spoken to recently, they haven't become clients, but they've referred me because we had an impact on the call. And I just think if you can get people into a conversation environment where you can just kind of learn about their business, ask good questions, show them what you're doing and tempt them with some interest, it's the relationship that you're building through that that could really grow your business through referrals and obviously winning their business. And then maybe a bit more about this posting. I think you mentioned that you feel uncomfortable sharing frameworks at times. How did you push through that? what you do and maybe also it's interesting why. Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think there's a whole world of lead generation, not kind of spammy-ness, but there is this kind of like almost kind of scammy feel of the pyramid effect. It's like a pyramid structures of like people just Trying to build leads, you know for leads sake and I don't necessarily feel comfortable with kind of falling into that kind of you know kind of spammy world What I do like to share is things that have worked and Time-served frameworks, but I don't I don't like my content to come across as like really kind of like constantly generation Comment this and get an I'll send you a workbook kind of thing like I just don't think that That is the best way of building your business. I think delivering value first is one of the most important things you can do. And I think there's too much focus on people who are doing these lead magnet frameworks where you just comment this and I'll DM you something. I just think it comes across really spammy sometimes, so I don't like to do too much of it. Yeah. I read the book by Jordan Belfeld about selling, I think he calls it a straight line system. And he's actually pretty clear. He says like sales is a straight line from open to close basically. And the customer tries to get you off the line. You try to get them back on, but if they have no intent, like then you stop. Like if they are not in business to buy a pen, basically they have no demand and leave it. And I think that might actually be the difference between this. Bami point and the other one like if you're not I don't know how we would do it but I think if you can identify kind of okay that people have a problem and I can solve it then you have some kind of qualification if you don't if they don't have the problem um yeah then it gets weird I think yeah I think one of the best things you can do through content is especially with the way the algorithm algorithms work now In fact, the algorithm on LinkedIn is updated quite recently. And the more you mention your ideal customer profile, the more likely it is that it will be shown to those people. So if you're selling to marketing agencies and you mention marketing agency a lot, you're more likely to get shown over there. So I think through your content, if you can talk to your ideal customer profile, mention their pain points. and position yourself as a solution through a piece of content, through a story, through a case study, for leadership. There's lots of other ways that we can help build content that is going to help you get visibility and build trust with individuals. And then anyone that engages with a piece of content like that, they become a lead because you've talked about a pain point. they've liked it or commented on it, potentially they might be experiencing that pain point themselves. So I just think content is a great way at the top of the funnel to capture people's interest. And that's why I said before, I don't too much like the kind of spammy lead generation approach. I much prefer leading with thought leadership and how to solve people's problems and leading with value. Especially I think in a thought leadership place, there are very successful companies that have built not only a brand, but also very, very long lasting businesses on on exactly that basically in selling services afterwards. Basically, if you if you try to get there, maybe with personalized outbound or something, what what do you think about these kind of things? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. If you if you basically want to get their kind of... How does personalized Outbound fit in? What do you think about that? Oh, gotcha. Yeah, so I definitely think that having personalization is important. I think timing is more important than personalization. And the reason for that is I could drop the best email or personalized thing about a particular opportunity. But if it isn't what that person's shopping for, then it's not going to land. So I do think personalization is important and it's obviously built into, I guess the way that you can do outbound is personalized to the person, their job role and their pain point. But I think the most important point is actually around the timing. If you can capture and reach out to somebody at the point that they've shown some interest in a product or a service, then I think that's even more important than the personalization to start with. That's super interesting. How do you do it? How do you find the moment? Well, the way that Ghost is built was we use this thing called signals. And in any scenario, there might be several different signals that kind of all build into the right timing. But that could be somebody that's taken on a new job role or investment. It could be that they're talking to a particular competitor publicly, and therefore it's a great signal for you. It could be somebody that's talking about their growth plans as a business or setting out their objectives for the year. And you might have a solution that fits into that plan in some way. Pain points, people talking about the pain points all the time. And if you've got a solution that solves them, then it could be the right time for you. So we've built an AI solution that sits in the middle that helps with building signals. If somebody meets any of those one criteria, they thought we pull their details and they come into a campaign. So if you tomorrow, you know, said that you were looking for a LinkedIn automation solution, you'd come straight into my signal. Similarly, if you were building like an agency project management tool that I was referencing, you know, if somebody's talking about... building processes and becoming more organized to grow their agency you would fall into that signal so um yeah timing is really important yeah i i would say i'm a surfer so timing is everything yeah having a timing you don't catch the wave i think it's the same in in sales as well and then i think you said goals are good for direction but systems are best for progress um how does that work actually Well, I think goals are the hopes and dreams, but the hopes and dreams don't make it happen. I think if you can break down how you're going to get from A to B or A to Z, then the plan how you get there is actually more important than the goal itself. So I've always kind of organized myself around systems. more and more increasingly as kind of technology has developed not systems that I execute but systems that I can build that execute for me because you can only scare yourself so much and in my younger days earlier software sales the systems were all about managing people and getting people to do things whereas I think now and the way that technology is moving certainly with AI it's how you can manage systems and processes and automations so that you're doing work whilst you're not tapping away at your keyboard. And that's just an absolutely fascinating space at the moment is to see where those automations, how they all play out and where that goes. I think that's actually a really interesting topic. So you've been in sales for quite a while, right? really interested how how did you get in there in the first place why did you basically make that decision and how did it work back then like also compared to today basically if you dive deeper yeah well this is touching almost like 20 years ago um my background was in recruitment actually so that's kind of why i have a love for the platform linkedin um as a recruiter it's just a gold mine that's where you spend your day I was actually recruiting people who were software engineers back in the early days, it was like Flash developers and .NET and all the kind of early developers. I actually fell in love with the online kind of techy space and ended up placing myself at one of my clients. And that's when I moved across from being a recruiter in the tech space to actually being an enterprise sales rep. in the software space. So that was a transition across moving from recruiter to sales guy. And the big difference of course is in recruitment you're selling people and services and in SaaS you're obviously selling a software solution and the value that your solution delivers to your clients. So there's a bit of a shift. But kind of getting back to the processes, as I progressed through sales management roles and leadership roles in tech, what I noticed is the more systems we had for our staff, the more effective the whole machine would be. Because you can't build a business around one or two brilliant people. You can't scale that. You've got to have all of the team operating in a way that is kind of proven and tested. And that's really where, honestly, where the idea for Ghost came is I had teams who were performing well because they were doing certain things regularly and I had other team members that were not doing things well because they weren't doing those things regularly. And a lot of that thing was to do with contact points. So, you know, people were not doing the outreach as intensively as they should be. And when you scale that across a team, you know, you start to see where the performance works well. So I'm hopefully trying to bring some of that expertise of outreach that I had in enterprise teams into the solo founder, small business startup B2B space. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. So I think a lot like if you look, I think you can look at different stage companies and different things will matter at times. What I find... I think is one of the best predictors of success is actually talent density. And so the ability of hire really good people who still function as a team, I think Steve Jobs has famously said that basically. And then it obviously changes a bit of a time when you try to kind of formalize certain things that work, right? And yeah, you're right. The world is changing very quickly. Now we are like in the I remember when I started in machine learning, I think it was more like we tried to predict things and had some statistics and we ended up in the LLM world, basically in Gen AI space and it's completely taken off over the last, I would say, since 2023, right? And I also believe that now today one person can basically do what a team could do not so long ago. How do you see this change? Especially this last couple of weeks. Yeah, this last couple of weeks in the AI and automation world has just been like clawed bot crazy, isn't it? Or open claw as it's called now. It's interesting, right? So I think in terms of the impact that has on SaaS, I think what we need to remember is that businesses are all at a different level of maturity when it comes to tech. There's still businesses trying to work out how to use a CRM. at the same time as there's people on the internet building squads of clawed bots. So I think it's interesting to see that kind of spectrum of people and different levels of technology across a whole variety of different businesses and work out where you fit into it. Most of my clients that I'm talking to are not at the level they're going to be building squads of clawed bots tomorrow. So it's actually not a concern or a threat to my business because I'm working with marketing agencies and other SaaS businesses that are so busy trying to build their own solution or sell their own solution. So I don't see things of that like a threat. I just think they're kind of interesting signals of where the market will go in the future. But they're certainly not something that's going to kill marketing tomorrow. I think it just changes, right? I also, as currently the world is moving so fast, it's very hard to predict where we'll be in like six months or something. And I wouldn't say as a, but my general point would still be if you have a business, there's probably some things that are core to your business. And there are a lot of things that are not core to your business and wasting time on figuring out how to do things that are not core to your business, maybe not what you should be doing. that there might be exceptions if you can do things a lot better than than everybody else outside but if if there's some great software that just takes and like routine task off of you it's probably a lot cheaper to just rent it and get that headache off and not deal with operations and all this kind of stuff Otherwise you might be sitting there with a lost database or something. I don't know how this will play out. But I also, at least in the world we are currently in, would also doubt that it's a good idea for companies to build all the softwares themselves. I think it makes a lot of sense to differentiate. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's an interesting space because you could argue like something like Clawport kind of replaces Ghost, the solution that I've built. But you could also argue that the audience I'm selling my solution to isn't the audience that's concerning themselves with that kind of bleeding edge, like kind of very latest tech. I'm trying to work in a B2B environment where most of them are providing marketing service or some level of consultant or SEO solution or whatever it might be. And they're just not at the level where they're spending time. that bleeding edge which is fascinating but also not the reality for 99 of businesses so um yeah i keep an eye and an ear to the ground and i kind of entertain myself with some of that kind of very bleeding edge stuff but it doesn't kind of affect day to day um you know how we operate yeah and and once again i don't i really at this point in time it's very very hard to predict where we are and how these things are gonna play out even in the next like 12 months. I think it's just very hard to predict. I think it's also always good to kind of go outside, touch grass and get a bit of an understanding what the consensus is if you get out of the tech bubble. I think because also I think there's like the word where you talk about cloud board and mold book and no open claw basically but these kind of things i think it's it's a bit of bubble and um there's still a huge world outside of the bubble and still i think the yeah the implications are quite quite strong and we will probably see some significant changes oh without a doubt i mean looking five or ten years ahead there's there's a huge market shift coming with all of this stuff but um you know we've all got to pay the mortgage tomorrow and I don't think you can be so concerned about what's around the corner when you've still got something to deliver today. I think it's the bleeding edge and it is a bit of a bubble. Yeah, and beyond that, once again, I think it's just so hard to predict at this point in time. I think we will see, what we probably see is very lean, high revenue businesses. That's what would be my first... first prediction actually that there will be companies especially in the startup space who will build significantly significant revenue with very few employees so that's kind of what I think and maybe going back to growth because I think that's still one of the topics that I really like to talk to you about I think you posted something around 50 steps to 10k MRR, right? Like, what's that about? Yeah, well, I think there's a journey, right? So it's a journey from starting out and understanding your ICP to hopefully being in a position where you've got that 10k MRR, which in the kind of indie hacker SaaS space is the aspirational goal for a lot of businesses. And, you know, really, if you break that down into your pricing approach, you know, you might have a hundred dollar a month solution. So 10K a month is a thousand customers. If you start to break that down into contact points and then start to think about what the sales and marketing approach needs to be to get there. That's where I started to build a kind of plan around. how I get there myself in my own business but also how we help our clients get there. So if you can build those touch points up from every single day creating content, engaging with people, sending outreach messages and responding to those and booking meetings, you're going to get, back to what we said earlier, your goal might be 10k a month but as long as you're, if you can break it down to the point where every day you're engaging with people, sending 20 messages. you're going to get there because you're just on you've got your systems you've got your plan you're doing the outreach to relevant contacts so you're moving along that journey so um if i if i was to really break it down i would start by understanding the icp and having your own goal and then building the systems to get from a from a to z and if you think about then the outreach itself like cold email or also ads maybe what's common pitfalls and what what is it What is good basically and what is bad? Well, I think ads is really difficult because when you're new and your solution is new, what you're doing is kind of buying the opportunity to build your brand. You're trying to put things in front of people, but the buyer journey isn't typically click and buy. I think ads works particularly well in a B2C environment where you might be selling. something on Shopify or something you can get delivered, you know, through Amazon. That works really, really well. But I'm not necessarily on board with smaller businesses doing ads because all you're doing is buying the opportunity to flash in front of somebody's eyes and their buyer journey isn't that quick. You know, nobody buys a SaaS because they've seen a good ad. What they do is kind of find the right time. They investigate multiple products. and an ad is just a very quick flash in the pan. So, yeah, my approach would be much more around building content in different channels across LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, anywhere else that you can kind of post on other people's platforms. All the directories and things are good because they all kind of build into the SEO. But I don't think you're going to win there overnight. And then the same with things like Reddit. you know you can do searches and find conversations of people that are having discussions about topics that you can help them with so having good content that you can post out onto reddit is equally as good as as linkedin as well and then where would you post would you post as like the founder ceo would you post under the company account what what's the good strategy do you mean for for linkedin or for reddit Basically, you can also differentiate if it's different over different platforms. Yeah, well, LinkedIn is prioritizing the individual over the company. I think posting on your LinkedIn page as a company is a kind of hygiene factor. It shows that the lights are still on and that somebody still works there. But you're not going to get any reach from those posts. It's really just if somebody kind of clicks into your page and sees that you're producing content, it's good to have it there. So for LinkedIn it's all about the individuals. For Reddit I've actually got two different browsers logged in with different accounts. So I've got a founder account on Reddit where I talk about some of the stories, the meetings I've had, case studies and try not to kind of pitch too much because obviously you can get thrown out of some of the subreddits for kind of overly promoted posts. And then I've got a subtle account, which is a bit more of a guerrilla approach where I'll create searches and then I'll subtly kind of write stories about how I used Ghost as an individual. And I kind of litter those into the occasional post as well. I think it's good to have both. I like a bit of guerrilla marketing, a bit of kind of underground stuff as well. Yeah. How long do you think it takes until you see first results like on something like that? Because I've always heard that SEO is a lot slower than like, for example, ads could be or something else. But what do you think until you have built a search ranking, for example, these kind of things? We don't get a lot of search traffic at the moment, if I'm honest. Most of the traffic that we get through search is people that have searched for our brand, TAM. and not finding us through kind of use case and pain point terms. So that's not really search in that perspective, like that's just people that already knew our brand. And our site has been up and live since October last year, so five, six months. And we're still only really getting brand traffic. We're not getting, you know, good cold kind of SEO. So that's the way that I definitely need to explore and do more. I'd say to answer your question about the kind of quickest route, obviously I'm biased because my solution is in the space, but I just think LinkedIn outreach is the fastest way to spark up conversations and get meetings with people in the B2B space. And that's not just because I run a solution that does that now. It's, you know, the last 20 years of my career I've spent basically on LinkedIn outreaching to people. you know, hand on heart, I probably sold like 30 million dollars of software through LinkedIn in itself is absolutely crazy. It's just a gold mine. If you can choose the right person at the right time and have a good message, there's huge opportunity there. And I think that is a really nice closing words for this podcast. So I think a lot of it is actually under that's true for life and being at the right place at the right time. Thank you so much Bas for being here it was really nice and to you my lovely listener see you next time.

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"I've sold $30 million dollars of software through LinkedIn alone. It is a gold mine."
In this episode of DN, Niklas sits down with Baz Furby, a 15-year B2B sales veteran and founder of Ghost, to discuss why the "spray and pray" method of cold outreach is dead.

Baz explains why early-stage startups should stop burning cash on Paid Ads and instead focus on Founder-Led Sales. He breaks down his exact playbook for generating 30-40 qualified meetings a month by tracking "Intent Signals"—reaching out to customers who are already talking to your competitors.

In this episode:
• The Shift: Why the old VC model of "burn cash on marketing" is over.
• Founder-Led Growth: Why your personal profile is more valuable than your company page.
• The "Ghost" Strategy: How to track competitor mentions to find hot leads.
• LinkedIn vs. X vs. Cold Email: Why LinkedIn is the superior B2B channel.
• Paid Ads: Why they are a trap for startups under $10k MRR.
• Guerrilla Marketing: How Baz uses "secret" accounts on Reddit to generate traffic.
• The AI Reality Check: Are "Claude Bots" actually replacing sales teams yet?
• Roadmap to $10k MRR: The 50-step system to hitting your first milestones.

🎧 Full episode on all podcast platforms
💬 Is LinkedIn your main acquisition channel? Let us know in the comments!
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#DN #B2BSales #BazFurby #SaaS #LinkedInGrowth #ColdOutbound #IndieHackers #FounderLedSales #Ghost #LeadGen

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro: Niklas meets Baz Furby (15+ years in SaaS)
1:40 The Shift: Why the "Enterprise Sales" model is dying
4:05 Founder-Led Marketing: Why CEOs need to be famous
6:50 Step 1: Defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
10:05 The "Ghost" Playbook: Using Intent Signals to get 40 meetings/month
14:50 Why LinkedIn Beats Cold Email & Twitter for B2B
16:30 Why Paid Ads are a waste of money for early startups
23:50 Personalized Outbound: Why "Timing"  "Personalization"
28:20 Systems vs. Goals: How to scale a sales team
31:46 The AI Hype: Are Claude Bots and "Open Claw" a threat?
37:37 The Roadmap to $10k MRR (50 Steps)
42:37 Guerrilla Marketing strategies on Reddit