Founder Interview
How ZenOutreach Landed 6 Customers in Its First Months with a Team of 2 (Interview with Laura van den Herrewegen)
- Interview Date
- July 20, 2021
- Interviewee
- Laura van den HerrewegenFounder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Customers (2021)
6
Team Size (2021)
2
List Building Price (2021)
$100 per month
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by the guest during the interview recorded in July 2021 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See ZenOutreach’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01ZenOutreach was founded in February 2021 and had 6 customers at the time of the interview
- 02The team was 2 people, with Laura owning 100% of the agency
- 03List building packages were priced at $100 per month
- 04Email outreach packages were priced at $550 per month
- 05ManyRequests saw a 120% MRR increase through ZenOutreach's list building and LinkedIn outreach campaigns
- 06ZenOutreach dropped LinkedIn outreach after the platform limited new connection requests to 100 per week
- 07First customers were acquired through networking and Facebook Groups
- 08ZenOutreach served B2B SaaS companies and agencies as an outsourced SDR team
- 09At least one client renewed, indicating early retention
- 10Laura previously co-founded a tech-based real estate service and led sales at an Amazon seller management company
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Customers (2021) | 6 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Team Size (2021) | 2 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| List Building Price (2021) | $100 per month | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| LinkedIn Outreach Limit (platform cap) (2021) | 100 new requests per week | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| ManyRequests MRR Growth via ZenOutreach (2021) | 120% | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Revenue: ZenOutreach offered monthly service packages starting at $100 per month for list building and $550 per month for email outreach, with custom plans priced higher. The company had 6 customers at the time of the interview.
Customers
Customers: Laura landed her first customers through networking and active participation in Facebook Groups. ManyRequests was the client she named, and at least one client renewed.
Team
Team: The company ran with a team of 2, and Laura owned 100% of the agency — asked directly whether the other person was a co-founder, she answered that she owned all of it.
Profitability and Funding
Profitability and Funding: ZenOutreach was bootstrapped, with no outside funding mentioned on the tape. Laura owned the agency outright and said she wanted to build software in the future but was not the one who would write it.
Growth Strategy
Facebook Groups for Early Customer Acquisition
Laura credited Facebook Groups as a key channel for building awareness and landing early customers. Posting regularly and engaging with communities helped ZenOutreach get its name known quickly after launching in February 2021.
Networking and Referrals
Personal networking was the primary driver of early customer acquisition. Laura built relationships that led directly to signed clients, including ManyRequests.
Focused Service Packages
Focused Service Packages: ZenOutreach offered three clearly defined packages — list building, email outreach and a custom plan — so SaaS companies and agencies knew exactly what they were buying.
Dropping Low-ROI Channels
After LinkedIn capped outreach at 100 new connection requests per week (400 a month), Laura stopped offering LinkedIn outreach and refocused the company on list building and email outreach.
Client Retention Through Results
ManyRequests saw an MRR increase of about 120% through ZenOutreach's campaigns, still worked with ZenOutreach at the time of the interview, and at least one other client renewed.
Best Quotes
“So we do B2B outreach for SaaS companies and for agencies, but we are a service business.”
“List building is $100 USD per month and email outreach is $550 The custom plan is a bit more expensive.”
“Today we have six customers at the moment.”
“Well, actually we are a small team. It's me and another person.”
“No, I own 100% of the agency.”
“Well, networking mainly. Also some Facebook groups are very useful if you try to make the name a bit known and try to post regularly, like, people's subnetting, so networking on Facebook groups as well.”
“We still work with them. We have another one of our clients who renewed as well.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured ZenOutreach just a few months after its February 2021 launch, when the company had 6 customers and a team of 2. The figures and details here reflect what Laura van den Herrewegen reported at that point in time and are not current. Visit the ZenOutreach company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data.
View ZenOutreach’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Background
- 0:27SaaS or Service Business
- 0:53Service Packages Explained
- 1:31Customer Examples and ManyRequests Results
- 3:06Pricing and Customer Count
- 3:24Team Size and Ownership
- 3:41Revenue Discussion
- 4:22Future Software Plans
- 5:23How First Customers Were Acquired
- 5:52Client Retention
- 6:16Why LinkedIn Outreach Was Dropped
Introduction and Background
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey folks, my guest today is Laura van den Herrewegen. She previously co founded a tech based real estate service and led sales at an Amazon seller management company. She founded ZenOutreach in February 2021. It's a company that focuses on lead generation. They offer different packages for list building, email outreach, and custom plans. They do a 100% of the work and help their customers optimize their campaigns to convert leads into sales opportunities. All right, Laura, are ready
00:23to take us to the top?
Laura van den Herrewegen
00:24>> Yes. Hi, Nathan. Thank you for having me today.
SaaS or Service Business
Nathan Latka
00:27You bet. Welcome to the show. So just to be clear, ZenOutreach, are you guys a SaaS company or a service business?
Laura van den Herrewegen
00:34>> So we do B2B outreach for SaaS companies and for agencies, but we are a service business.
Nathan Latka
00:41So it's almost like an outsourced SDR team, kind of?
Laura van den Herrewegen
00:46>> Correct, yeah.
Nathan Latka
00:47I see. Okay, tell me more how that works. What do customers typically pay you and what are they buying?
Service Packages Explained
Laura van den Herrewegen
00:53>> Okay. So we have three different type of packages that we offer. The first one is what we call list building, whereby we just look for leads that are within the client's requirement for the target clients. And the second one we do email outreach. So we do basically what we do in the first package then we do the outreach campaign via email. And then the last one is a custom plan. So the client let us know what
01:20>> type of skills they are looking for into a sales development representative, and we connect them with that sales development representative. The last one is a bit different.
Customer Examples and ManyRequests Results
Nathan Latka
01:31Tell me more about can you name some of the customers, the SaaS customers you're working with right now?
Laura van den Herrewegen
01:36>> So we've worked with ManyRequests before.
Nathan Latka
01:41Sorry, which company?
Laura van den Herrewegen
01:43>> ManyRequests.
Nathan Latka
01:44ManyRequests. Okay.
Laura van den Herrewegen
01:45>> Yeah. We've worked with a brief software. Those are the two main ones that we've Okay.
Nathan Latka
01:51So tell me more about about ManyRequests. Like, how many like, what were they paying per month and and what were you able to deliver to them in terms of results?
Laura van den Herrewegen
02:00>> Okay. So they did with us, of course, the list building service at first because they were doing their own email campaign. And when we started, we used to do LinkedIn campaigns, which we stopped now. So they used to use our services for that. So we did have good results with them. We worked on, we increased that MRR of like 120%.
Nathan Latka
02:30But is that going from like a dollar to a dollar 20 or like $10 a month to like, you know, $25 a month?
Laura van den Herrewegen
02:37>> I'm sorry, could you repeat that one?
Nathan Latka
02:40Yeah. When you talk about increasing MRR, instead of percentages, can you talk about the actual dollars? How much revenue do you help them add?
Laura van den Herrewegen
02:49>> Well, in terms of revenues, I don't have the numbers right now like that by head, but I know we fund them They closed several deals with us, like four or five deals. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
03:01And what do most customers pay on average per month?
Pricing and Customer Count
Laura van den Herrewegen
03:06>> List building is $100 USD per month and email outreach is $550 The custom plan is a bit more expensive.
Nathan Latka
03:15Okay. And how many customers are you working with today?
Laura van den Herrewegen
03:18>> Today we have six customers at the moment.
Nathan Latka
03:21Okay. And who's WE? Tell me more about your team.
Team Size and Ownership
Laura van den Herrewegen
03:24>> Well, actually we are a small team. It's me and another person. So I'm not sure what you want to know. I'm So two of you guys. Yeah. Two of us.
Nathan Latka
03:35Yeah. Are they a co founder or do you own 100% of the agency?
Laura van den Herrewegen
03:38>> No, I own 100% of the agency.
Revenue Discussion
Nathan Latka
03:41We love that. Okay. So you own 100%, six customers at 200 ish bucks a month. Does that mean you're doing, what is that, like $2,000 $3,000 a month in revenue?
Laura van den Herrewegen
03:51>> Right now we are around $1,500 $2,000 yeah.
Nathan Latka
03:56Per month? Yeah. Have you thought about a lot of the great SaaS companies, they start off as an agency like you. Have you thought about writing code or building your own tools to help your customers get more leads?
Laura van den Herrewegen
04:08>> Yeah, we want to do in the future more developing a software as well. I'm not sure exactly how, but I do think it will be a solution also give more
Future Software Plans
Laura van den Herrewegen
04:22>> I'm not sure to say it, to give more opportunities for customers as well and for us. Mhmm.
Nathan Latka
04:28And how do you how do you think about if you were gonna grow your own tech team internally and build your own software MVP, how would you go about doing that? Are you an engineer? Could you build it or just outsource dev team you'd work with? How would you do it?
Laura van den Herrewegen
04:42>> I wouldn't be the one.
Nathan Latka
04:45See. I see.
Laura van den Herrewegen
04:46>> Very cool.
Nathan Latka
04:47Now you mentioned you've been doing this a bunch. You worked with an Amazon seller previously. Any I mean, are you still working with Amazon sellers today or just SaaS companies?
Laura van den Herrewegen
04:55>> No. I worked for an Amazon service company before, but we don't well, we don't necessarily work with them. We depend on SaaS companies and marketing.
Nathan Latka
05:07And so what year did you quit the Amazon deal and start launching, you launched your agency?
Laura van den Herrewegen
05:13>> Yeah, correct. It was, we started in Feb this year.
Nathan Latka
05:16February this year?
Laura van den Herrewegen
05:17>> Yeah. Oh, wow.
Nathan Latka
05:18Okay. So very new. Very, very new.
Laura van den Herrewegen
05:21>> Yeah. Very new.
How First Customers Were Acquired
Nathan Latka
05:23How did get your first couple of customers? How did you find ManyRequests?
Laura van den Herrewegen
05:28>> Well, networking mainly. Also some Facebook groups are very useful if you try to make the name a bit known and try to post regularly, like, people's subnetting, so networking on Facebook groups as well.
Nathan Latka
05:43Very cool. Well, you're onto something special, sounds like. I hope you keep adding these customers. Now, do they stick around? Does ManyRequests still pay you today?
Client Retention
Laura van den Herrewegen
05:52>> We still work with them. We have another one of our clients who renewed as well.
Nathan Latka
06:01Good. So they're sticking around. I mean, that's the tricky part with services. If they don't stick around, it's hard to build a real business, you know?
Laura van den Herrewegen
06:07>> Yeah, correct.
Nathan Latka
06:08Very cool. Okay, Laura, let's Anything you want to add on here that I missed about your story? Maybe new products you guys are thinking about, new service offerings?
Why LinkedIn Outreach Was Dropped
Laura van den Herrewegen
06:16>> Not at the moment. We just actually changed, as I said, we used to do LinkedIn, but we dropped that.
Nathan Latka
06:23Why did you drop it? Did they ban you?
Laura van den Herrewegen
06:25>> No, at all. It's just that LinkedIn to put some limitation on the number of requests we can do per week, which was becoming very limited as we can do only 100 new requests per week, 400 per month. That's the number of people you can contact. So I decided not to focus on that one. We recently started to offer list building, so at the moment we are focusing on those things.
Nathan Latka
06:55Alright, very cool Laura, let's wrap here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:00>> My favorite business book,
07:05>> I don't know like that. I would say I don't necessarily read books, I read more like online, like blogs or articles.
Nathan Latka
07:13Okay, we'll skip that one. Number two, is there a founder that you're following or studying?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:18>> Well, I would say Robin from ManyRequests. I followed him quite a while because, yeah, well, he did a lot with the product based community and product based type of businesses.
Nathan Latka
07:31Number three, what's your favorite online tool for list building and outreach?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:36>> Well, we do use ManyRequests as well, so I would say it's a good idea.
Nathan Latka
07:40Number three, or four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:44>> I would say between seven and eight.
Nathan Latka
07:46Okay, so pretty healthy, and what's your situation Laura, married, single, kiddos?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:50>> I'm in a relationship.
Nathan Latka
07:52Okay, no kids?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:54>> No kids.
Nathan Latka
07:54No kids. And can I ask how old you are?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:57>> I'm 31.
Nathan Latka
07:5821?
Laura van den Herrewegen
07:59>> 31.
Nathan Latka
08:0131?
Laura van den Herrewegen
08:02>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
08:02Oh, 31, okay, got it. And last question, what's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
Laura van den Herrewegen
08:08>> Something that I wish I knew when I was 20. Well, I think I knew what I needed to know back then. I believe life is about learning. So yeah.
Nathan Latka
08:21Guys, there you have it, ZenOutreach launched just a couple months ago, already three or four SaaS customers. She's making call it $1,000 $2,000 per month with a team of two as she looks to scale, helping these SaaS founders get new leads, get new demos booked, ultimately close new MRR. Laura, thanks for taking us to the top.
Laura van den Herrewegen
08:37>> Thank you for having me today.