Refiner

Refiner Update: How We Repositioned Our Brand And 5x'd MRR [$16K/Month]

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Moritz Dausinger

Founder, Refiner

$16K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Refiner

refiner.io

from Paris, France

started March 2020

$16,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Zero To Sold: How To Start, Run, And Sell A Bootstrapped

Want more updates on Refiner? Check out these stories:

1. How I Created A $3K/Month Customer Survey Software (2021) ➜

This is a follow up story for Refiner. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 4 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

My name is Moritz Dausinger and I’m the founder of Refiner. I’m a serial entrepreneur and Refiner is my fourth startup.

Refiner is a customer feedback survey tool for SaaS companies. Our typical customers are B2B and B2C SaaS startups and scale-ups.

We launched Refiner in March 2020, right before COVID hit. After a couple of quiet weeks, we had our first paying customer. Since then, we mostly stayed on a strong growth trajectory. In 2021, we nearly 5x our Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), and 2022 is looking strong as well so far. Our goal is to hit $30k MRR by the end of the year.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?

Last year was really pivotal for us and a lot has happened since the last interview on Start Story.

It all started with an in-depth analysis of what our happy customers value most about Refiner and how we can serve them even better.

Being clear about who you are as a company and who your ideal customers are worked really well for us. It makes life easier for the product & marketing team, and most importantly for your customers.

As a result, we were able to develop a clear vision for our product and the positioning of Refiner. Unlike other survey tools that cater to a broad market, we are 100% focused on providing the best possible solution for B2B & B2C SaaS companies.

Once we nailed down the positioning, we were able to refresh our brand, publish a new website, and add a TON of new exciting product features.

A couple of months in and I can say that the endeavor of refining our positioning (pun intended) was worth it and probably the most important thing we did since our launch.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

We’ve spent quite a lot of time on the positioning of Refiner.

And it wasn’t an easy task at all.

In our case, it meant that we needed to say “no” to a couple of customers which were already using Refiner. It’s a tough call to exclude certain types of use-cases and decide to focus on others when you are a young software company.

But I knew that having a clear vision for who we are as a company, our product, and where we want to go will make things easier.

What I didn’t know was how much impact this exercise would really have.

I was in for a big surprise.

Since we’ve doubled down on serving SaaS companies only, everything seems much easier.

Not just on the product side when it comes to prioritizing new features. It really affects the whole business. We can be more specific in our marketing efforts, offer a better pricing model, etc.

I guess the lesson here is that starting small and learning to say “no” is a good thing.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

Difficult to say to be honest. The big milestone ahead is 1m USD in ARR. When - if ever - we’ll reach that milestone and what happens then is not clear to me yet.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

I can just repeat my previous answer here and tell you what worked for us.

Try to figure out what your most successful customers love about your solution. Then, use those insights to develop a strong vision and positioning for your product.

Being clear about who you are as a company and who your ideal customers are worked really well for us. It makes life easier for the product & marketing team, and most importantly for your customers.