Long ball growth strategy: $40 CAC, recouped in the first month

Nick Francis says Help Scout wasn't started to fill a gap in the market (several customer service products already existed) but because none of them reflected the founders' values; separately, Help Scout's own company page attributes the trigger to an internal support overload from one of the founders' earlier side projects.

“we did so not because there was a lack of good customer service products in the market — there were several — but because there wasn't one that mirrored our values”

The first users were private beta companies recruited off the founders' own blog audience rather than from a launch platform or cold outreach. Applications were capped at the first 100 signups, every applicant was sent a questionnaire, and about 30 companies that fit the profile were let in. By 24 March 2011, a month before the public launch, the beta was over 40 companies. All of them used the product free during the beta.

“We ended up with about 30 companies that fit the profile and we gave them access to the application.”

No founder-authored source names Help Scout's first paying customer, its price or its date. What the founders did write is that beta participants used the product free, and that when the beta ended they were rewarded with free time on paid accounts, 10 to 15 of the most active companies getting free accounts for life and the rest a free month or year. That puts the earliest paying accounts inside the beta cohort at the 27 April 2011 public launch rather than from any separate acquisition push.