How Much Does It Cost To Start A Marketing Automation Platform? (In 2024)

"In the beginning, since this was a private venture from Greg, everything was totally bootstrapped, all the money came from within, primarily after selling Greg’s previous company, but also some of our own money was invested, and then in 2018 we took a private first-round of investing from a non-VC local channel."

Mike Korba is the co-founder of User.com, a sales and automation software business that has grown significantly since its inception.

"One of the lessons that we learned from the Growave launch is that we took over six months to launch the product, costing everything. Thanks to profits from ThinkLab, we managed to pull it through. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be possible to release Growave to the market."

Eldar is the founder of Growave, an all-in-one marketing tool for Shopify brands.

"We are a bootstrapped company that works with a team of contractors around the world, with no full-time employees. Because I had just sold my company, I had the financial freedom to start eWebinar without feeling like I needed to raise a lot of money from the beginning. I hired a development shop to build the first version of eWebinar."

Melissa Kwan is the founder of eWebinar, a webinar automation platform that has been live for over two years and currently generates around $50k MRR.

"Before that, I was doing well for myself in real estate. I was well-versed in negotiations, raising capital, and managing deals effectively. Without boring you with the details, I had a big payoff after selling most of my properties. 100% of this money was funneled into websites."

Forrest Webber is the founder of Digitail.co, an agency that provides content, backlinks, SEO research, and turnkey websites to blog portfolio owners and aspiring bloggers.

"In the first year, Filestage was almost completely bootstrapped, and also later, we survived for a long time on a small business angel investment."

Niklas Dorn is the founder of Filestage, a content review and approval software business started in 2015 that helps teams easily share, comment, and approve any digital content.

"Our first 2 clients for the Coaching program came from our workshops and we sold those programs for $1,800 each on the back end of the workshop."

Jim Ackerman is the founder of Ascend Marketing, a marketing coaching business that developed a unique program offering a 200% Return On Investment Guarantee.

"To break the corporate shackles, AND if I wanted to stay away from raising money, I would need clients to bring in money that I could apply towards the growth of my sites. However, becoming an agency was off the table. There are some great agencies out there, but that is not a model that fits well within my life."

Michael Gardon is the founder of Rejoin Media, a portfolio of web-based businesses that operates on a private equity model, generating around $100,000 per month in revenue.

"We had to grow fast, but we didn’t have the funds to support such growth... Two months later, we raised another 50,000 euros."

Alex Bozhin is the founder of Postoplan, a social media and messenger marketing automation platform that has achieved significant growth and recognition in the startup world.

"In about 20 hours of work paid for through Upwork, I had a minimum system of a branded captive page, integration with Mailchimp, and operational ability to manually add more access points for different homes."

Arthur Colker is the founder of StayFi, a WiFi marketing and management company for professional short-term rental operators that currently operates in almost 10,000 rental properties from 600+ companies across 10 countries.

"I was very clear that I wanted to bootstrap, so I kept the costs minimal. The legal costs, including the company formation, were the major costs. Adding all the server/infrastructure costs, I think it totaled about $2000 to start."

Usama is the founder of SocialBu, a social media management platform.