← Back to browse

CinchShare

by Jennifer JohnsonLaunched 2014-01via The SaaS Podcast

CinchShare is a simplified social media scheduling tool built by Jennifer Johnson for direct sellers and network marketers. Launched in January 2014 after a 2-month development period, it grew from solving Jennifer's own pain point (reducing 2-hour daily scheduling to 20 minutes) to 10,000 customers by end of 2015, driven entirely by word-of-mouth and Facebook community engagement. The company is now bootstrapped, profitable, with $5M+ ARR and zero outside investment.

Key Takeaways

  • Used word of mouth as primary growth channel
  • Got first customer via Word of mouth through her direct sales team and upline; shared with team members who wanted to use it
  • Most effective channel: word-of-mouth
  • Monetizes with subscription pricing
  • Built initial product in 4 weeks (initial version, built evenings and weekends)

Revenue

Current ARR$5.0M
Pricing Modelsubscription

Traction

First Customer ChannelWord of mouth through her direct sales team and upline; shared with team members who wanted to use it
Most Effective Channelword-of-mouth
Outreach MethodFacebook groups (both proprietary community group and existing direct seller Facebook groups)
Traction Patternword-of-mouth

Tech

Dev Duration4 weeks (initial version, built evenings and weekends)
Tools Used
HootsuiteBufferPost PlannerFacebookApple App StoreGoogle Play Store

Why They Built It

Jennifer, a stay-at-home mom running a direct sales business, spent over 2 hours daily scheduling Facebook posts. Existing tools like Hootsuite and Buffer didn't save her significant time, so she and her husband built a simplified tool for her own use.

Similar Companies

Active Campaign

$4.2M/mo

Active Campaign started in 2003 as an on-premise email marketing solution built by Jason Vanderboom to fund his fine arts degree. After 10 years and 8 employees generating a couple million in revenue, he transitioned to a SaaS model starting at $9/month. The company now has over 60,000 customers generating over $50 million annually and employs 330 people, growing primarily through organic adoption, partnerships, and focus on the SMB market despite pressure to move upmarket.

Ahrefs

$3.3M/mo

Ahrefs is a bootstrapped SaaS company providing SEO and backlink analysis tools, currently generating over $40M ARR with 45 employees. After joining in 2015, Tim Solo transformed the blog from 15,000 to 250,000+ monthly Google visitors by shifting from publishing what they wanted to write about to targeting keywords people actually search for, creating high-quality content with direct product integration, and continuously updating articles to accumulate backlinks. The company breaks conventional marketing wisdom by not using customer personas, growth hacks, or detailed analytics—instead focusing entirely on product quality and audience education through blog content.

RenewTrack

$500k/mo

RenewTrack is a SaaS platform that manages contract renewals for global tech companies like VMware, Lenovo, HP, and Cisco. Matthew Cagney joined as CEO in 2020 to rescue a 6-year-old startup with only 2 customers, high churn, and a fragmented product with 6 different codebases. By consolidating the product, over-investing in customer service, focusing sales efforts on high-value enterprise deals, and pivoting to a subscription model, RenewTrack grew to $6M ARR with 16-18 customers in roughly 3-4 years.

Proposify

$375k/mo

Proposify is a SaaS platform that streamlines the proposal creation and sales process for agencies and businesses. Founded in 2014 by Kyle Racky and Kevin after they ran a design agency, the product struggled initially at $800 MRR for 17 months before hitting product-market fit in late 2014 through improved templates and onboarding. Today the company generates $4.5M ARR, driven primarily by organic search and content marketing.

Rezi

$288k/mo

Rezi is an AI-based resume builder founded in 2015 that helps users create resumes optimized for applicant tracking systems. The company generates approximately $287,921 in monthly recurring revenue and serves about 1M new users annually, with an enterprise product supporting over 300 organizations including Fortune 500 companies.

Related Guides