$100K ARRin 3 years

4 milestones

Acquired

Sold to Atlassianfor $975Mas of November 2023Source

Acquired by Atlassian for $975M (Nov 2023). 25M+ users at acquisition.

Cómo 9 Meses de Fracaso y 2 Pivotes Llevaron a una Salida de $975M

Founder

Shahed Khan

Co-Fundadores•Technical•USA

Commitment

Full-time

Experience

First-time

Product

Loom

Plataforma de mensajería de video asincrónico que ayuda a 23M+ usuarios a comunicarse mejor a escala

Type

SaaS

Industry

Productividad

Model

Freemium

Marketing Strategy

How Shahed acquired customers

Growth Channel

Boca a Boca

Also Used

Product HuntComunidades

Tech Stack

Tools used to build Loom

ReactWebRTCNode.jsAWSChrome Extension APIs

The Full Story

TL;DR

Shahed Khan y sus cofundadores pivotaron dos veces antes de llegar a Loom. La plataforma de video asincrónico fue adquirida por Atlassian por $975 millones.

"Cómo 9 meses de construcción sin éxito, 2 pivotes difíciles y docenas de rechazos resultaron en Loom." La reflexión honesta de Shahed Khan sobre el camino sinuoso hacia una salida de casi mil millones de dólares.

La Primera Idea Fallida

Loom no comenzó como Loom. Comenzó alrededor de un pizarrón con Vinay, Joe y Shahed. Escribieron seis ideas y fueron con lo que pensaban que era perfecto: un mercado de pruebas de usuario.

7 meses después, solo habían ganado $600. Pero aprendieron una lección importante: las empresas generalmente se preocupaban menos por consejos de expertos (lo que estaban vendiendo). En su lugar, querían escuchar directamente de sus propios usuarios.

Pivote #1: OpenTest

Pivotaron a OpenTest, una herramienta para reunir retroalimentación de usuario a través de video. Estaba más cerca, pero seguía sin ganar tracción. Con fondos bajando y el tiempo pasando, necesitaban tomar otra decisión difícil.

Pivote #2: Loom

El avance llegó cuando se dieron cuenta de que la tecnología de grabación de video que construyeron para pruebas de usuario tenía aplicaciones más amplias. ¿Qué pasaría si cualquiera pudiera grabar y compartir rápidamente mensajes de video?

Esa es la historia de cómo nació Loom: una idea que funcionaba, después de un par que no.

Lanzamiento en Product Hunt

El día de su lanzamiento en Product Hunt, Loom vio más registros que en los 6 meses anteriores combinados. Durante la siguiente semana, miles más se registraron. Los fundadores habían estado despiertos durante 36 horas seguidas durante el lanzamiento, funcionando con cansancio y emoción.

El Bucle Viral

El crecimiento de Loom fue impulsado por un bucle viral poderoso: cada video de Loom compartido expuso a nuevos usuarios potenciales al producto. Cuando suficientes empleados comienzan a usarlo "orgánicamente", las empresas no tienen opción más que adoptar Loom como herramienta de comunicación predeterminada.

En 2023, Atlassian adquirió Loom por $975 millones. La ganancia estimada de Shahed fue de alrededor de $100 millones.

Key Takeaways

La mayoría de productos exitosos llegan después de pivotes: Loom fue el tercer intento

Presta atención a lo que los usuarios realmente quieren vs. lo que crees que necesitan

Los bucles virales (cada Loom compartido = nuevo usuario expuesto) impulsan crecimiento exponencial

Los lanzamientos de Product Hunt pueden proporcionar validación masiva: su lanzamiento superó 6 meses de registros

La tecnología que construyes para un problema podría ser la solución para uno más grande

Originally published onShahed Khan Twitter

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Shahed's Loom playbook into your next test.

See what it covers before you sign up: the pattern worth copying, the channel to test, and the risk to avoid when you adapt this story.

Pattern

$100K ARR

Channel

Boca a Boca

Output

Action checklist

What a proof brief covers

A one-page brief that turns Shahed's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Boca a Boca
A risk check before copying the Loom playbook

See what a proof brief covers

See what it covers first. Create an account only if you choose to unlock.

Inspired by Shahed's journey? Generate a business idea in the Productividad space using AI and real founder data.

Milestone Journey

Shahed achieved 4 milestones on the path to $100K ARR

Primer Cliente

9 months

July 2016

Avg: 3 months

+3 months to next milestone

$1K MRR

$1,000

1 year

October 2016

Avg: 11 months

+1 year to next milestone

$10K MRR

$10,000

2 years

October 2017

Avg: 1 year

+1 year to next milestone

$100K ARR

$100,000

3 years

October 2018

Avg: 3 years

3 years

Total journey time

Milestones achieved

Shahed's Path to $100K ARRPremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Shahed actually did it

6/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Shahed's own published sources. Quoted claims are the founder's words, verified verbatim; anything marked as our analysis is exactly that.

Where the idea came from

Pivot from prior productPivot from A user testing marketplace (the original whiteboard idea, which made only $600 in 7 months), then OpenTest, a SaaS product for companies to collect video feedback directly from their own users

Shahed Khan says Loom began at a whiteboard session with co-founders Vinay Hiremath and Joe Thomas, where the three wrote down six candidate ideas and chose the one they thought was the strongest: a user testing marketplace, the product that became the company's original, unsuccessful first attempt.

“It started around a whiteboard with Vinay, Joe, and myself. We wrote down six ideas, and went with the solution we thought was perfect”

Shahed Khan on X: "How 9 months of building without success, 2 difficult pivots...resulted in Loom" (long-form post)

Validation

Built first, validated after

MvpValidated

The team had already built and launched OpenTest (a video-feedback MVP) when a Harvard research team used its Chrome extension in an unintended way, recording a 1-minute video summary instead of sharing individual clips. That accidental use case, not a survey or presale, is the signal Shahed Khan credits with revealing that people wanted a communication tool, not a feedback tool.

Shahed Khan frames the Harvard team's unconventional use of OpenTest's recording extension as the moment that exposed the real opportunity behind Loom.

“This wasn’t how our product was supposed to be used.”

Shahed Khan on X: "How 9 months of building without success, 2 difficult pivots...resulted in Loom" (long-form post)

First test users

Online community~3000 usersFree testersProduct Hunt

Shahed Khan says the pivoted product (the screen and video recording extension that became Loom) launched on Product Hunt in June 2016 and picked up 3,000 signups on day one, dwarfing everything the team had accumulated in the prior 9 months.

“launched it on Product Hunt in June 2016, and had 3,000 people sign up on the same day”

Shahed Khan on X: "How 9 months of building without success, 2 difficult pivots...resulted in Loom" (long-form post)

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Product Hunt · Loom (video recording extension) launch, June 2016LaunchWorked

Shahed Khan's own account: the team took the recording extension built for OpenTest and launched it on Product Hunt in June 2016, generating 3,000 signups the same day.

“launched it on Product Hunt in June 2016, and had 3,000 people sign up on the same day”

Shahed Khan on X: "How 9 months of building without success, 2 difficult pivots...resulted in Loom" (long-form post)

Vinay Hiremath, in a third-party as-told-to Business Insider piece (not founder-published, so treated as implied rather than stated), credited the Product Hunt traction partly to staying active and answering questions and comments in real time rather than treating the listing as a one-way announcement.

Per Business Insider as-told-to essay: "How I got my first million users" (Vinay Hiremath, Loom co-founder/CTO, not Shahed Khan)

Word of Mouth · single employee to company-wide adoption inside an existing customer (Atlassian)ScalingWorked

Co-founder Joe Thomas (writing for the whole founding team, which includes Shahed Khan) describes one Atlassian employee starting to record and share Looms five days after the June 2016 launch.

“the first @Atlassian employee started recording and sharing looms”

Joe Thomas LinkedIn post: "Today marks a monumental milestone in the Loom story" (Atlassian acquisition announcement)

That single early user's team grew into full company-wide adoption years later, which the founders point to as the viral, bottoms-up mechanism that eventually made Atlassian a customer and then an acquirer.

“Fast forward four years and they became the first organization to purchase thousands of Loom licenses”

Joe Thomas LinkedIn post: "Today marks a monumental milestone in the Loom story" (Atlassian acquisition announcement)

Twitter / X · responding to organic product mentionsScalingWorked

Vinay Hiremath, in the same third-party as-told-to piece (implied, not Shahed Khan's own words), described staying personally active on Twitter and engaging with anyone tweeting about the product as an ongoing practice.

Per Business Insider as-told-to essay: "How I got my first million users" (Vinay Hiremath, Loom co-founder/CTO, not Shahed Khan)

What didn't work

PositioningPre-launchCost: time

The original idea, a user testing marketplace selling expert testing/advice services to companies, generated only $600 in revenue over its first 7 months.

“7 months in, we only made $600”

Shahed Khan on X: "How 9 months of building without success, 2 difficult pivots...resulted in Loom" (long-form post)

Shahed Khan says the core mismatch was that customers didn't want paid expert opinions, the thing the team was selling; they wanted feedback straight from their own end users instead.

“Companies generally cared less about advice from experts”

Shahed Khan on X: "How 9 months of building without success, 2 difficult pivots...resulted in Loom" (long-form post)

What they did instead: Pivoted to OpenTest, a SaaS product letting companies collect direct video feedback from their own users instead of paid expert testers.

Product scopePre-launch

OpenTest itself (the direct-user-feedback pivot) does not appear, in Shahed Khan's own account, to have produced significant standalone traction before the team moved on again; he moves straight from the OpenTest premise to the Harvard misuse story without citing OpenTest revenue or user numbers.

Our analysis, not the founder's claim

What they did instead: Repurposed OpenTest's recording Chrome extension as a standalone video-messaging product and launched it separately on Product Hunt as Loom.

How it changed as they grew

At launch: 3 people (Vinay Hiremath, Joe Thomas and Shahed Khan, building out of a shared apartment in San Mateo)

Today: 2 people (Vinay Hiremath and Joe Thomas continued day-to-day; Shahed Khan stepped back from Loom's day-to-day operations, remaining a friend and advisor to the company)

Series a plus · $11,000,000 · 2019-02

Series a plus · $30,000,000 · 2019-11

Series a plus · $28,750,000

Series a plus · $130,000,000 · 2021-05

Sources (6 in the founder's own words)

Shahed Khan on X: "How 9 months of building without success, 2 difficult pivots...resulted in Loom" (long-form post) · founder-authored · 2024-04
Inside Atlassian blog: "Loom is joining Atlassian" (bylined Joe Thomas and Vinay Hiremath, co-founders) · founder-authored · 2023-10
Inside Atlassian blog: "Loom Raises $11MM Series A Led by Kleiner Perkins" (bylined Shahed Khan, co-founder) · founder-authored · 2019-02
Inside Atlassian blog: "Why we raised a $30M Series B" (bylined Joe Thomas, co-founder) · founder-authored · 2019-11
Joe Thomas LinkedIn post: "Loom Raises $130m Series C to Unlock the Potential of Video for Hybrid Work" · founder-authored · 2021-05
Joe Thomas LinkedIn post: "Today marks a monumental milestone in the Loom story" (Atlassian acquisition announcement) · founder-authored · 2023-10
Business Insider as-told-to essay: "How I got my first million users" (Vinay Hiremath, Loom co-founder/CTO, not Shahed Khan) · third party · 2022-02

Persistence

Projects attempted before finding success

failed projects before this one worked

Learned from a previous attempt

Launch Strategy

How they introduced the product to the world

Product Hunt

Initial go-to-market approach

High-visibility single-day launch

Validation

How they tested demand before building

MVP

Method used to confirm market interest

Most common approach — build and learn fast

Launch Pricing

Price point when the product first launched

Gratis

Initial pricing strategy

Common for building initial traction

Starting Audience

Whether they had followers before launch

Started from Zero

Built audience alongside the product

63% of founders in our database started from zero

Time Investment

Average weekly hours during building phase

80 hrs

per week on average

Full-time dedication

Initial Investment

Capital required to get started

$25,000

in startup costs

Significant upfront investment

Biggest Challenge

9 meses de construcción sin éxito, 2 pivotes difíciles y docenas de rechazos de inversores antes de encontrar product-market fit

Unlock Shahed's Full Journey

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Frequently asked questions

Who acquired Loom?

Loom was acquired by Atlassian for $975M on November 2023. Acquired by Atlassian for $975M (Nov 2023). 25M+ users at acquisition.

What is Loom?

Plataforma de mensajería de video asincrónico que ayuda a 23M+ usuarios a comunicarse mejor a escala. It operates in Productividad.

How long did it take Loom to reach $100k arr?

Shahed Khan took 3 years to reach $100k arr with Loom.

Was Shahed Khan a solo founder?

No. Shahed Khan built Loom with co-founders.

What marketing channel did Loom use to grow?

Loom grew primarily through Boca a Boca.

What industry is Loom in?

Loom operates in Productividad.

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The Full Story

TL;DR

Shahed Khan y sus cofundadores pivotaron dos veces antes de llegar a Loom. La plataforma de video asincrónico fue adquirida por Atlassian por $975 millones.