Article · 22 min read

Ritesh Arora of BrowserStack on thinking global and scaling up

Anand Daniel · Accel India Insights (SeedToScale) Free Intermediate India

Includes the detail that matters most: a tweet from the creator of jQuery brought 10,000 beta users in three weeks. Developer trust, not advertising, was the entire early go-to-market.

  • One John Resig tweet in August 2011 brought 10,000 beta users in about three weeks, and 20,000 dollars a month within four to five months.
  • BrowserStack reached 20M dollars ARR with a 50 person team, mostly on word of mouth rather than paid acquisition.
  • Give an idea about four months to show something, with 12 months as the hard upper cap before you move on.
  • Launch free and do not even think about pricing for the first six months.
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It answers 3 questions

  1. How did BrowserStack get its first millions in revenue almost entirely on word of mouth?
  2. How do the best Indian companies compete against a US incumbent without pretending to be American?
  3. What did Postman and BrowserStack do to earn trust with global developers?

Read with it

  1. Asthana describes earning developer trust by being useful in forums years before monetising, which is the honest version of... In Depth, First Round Review Podcast · 1 hr 10 min From Chrome extension to $5B platform: Postman's journey with Abhinav Asthana Brett Berson with Abhinav Asthana
  2. Video · Interview The BrowserStack story, from Co-founder and CEO Ritesh Arora Ritesh Arora
  3. The founder's own account of entering an existing category (help desk) against Zendesk rather than inventing a new one, and... Freshworks Article · 9 min read The Freshdesk Story: Where and How it All Started Girish Mathrubootham
  4. Video · 25 min Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu on the Long Game, Transnational Localism, and the Future of AI Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman with Sridhar Vembu
  5. Arora on building from Mumbai for 135 countries without ever raising primary capital, which is the credibility argument in its... Inc42 Article · 12 min read Build Local, Think Global: The Vision of BrowserStack's Ritesh Arora Inc42 BrandLabs
  6. What changes in your story when a developer loved product has to be sold to a CIO who has never heard of you. Directly relevant... Heavybit Video · 35 min Moving into the Enterprise: Fireside with Postman's Founder and CEO Adam Gross with Abhinav Asthana
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