Issue 025: How Marie Martens Grew Tally to $2mn in Annual Recurring Revenue, the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and More

We also discuss a simple strategy to make your business more trustworthy in seconds.

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March 05, 2025 | #025 | Free Version

Hi friend and happy Wednesday!

Welcome to Startup Blitz, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in your online business.

This week, we discuss –

đź‘‘ How Marie Martens grew Tally to $2mn ARR

🤝 How to make your website more trustworthy in seconds

📢 The 22 immutable laws of marketing

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How a Bootstrapped Founder Took on Billion-Dollar Competitors And Won

As a bootstrapped founder, how do you compete against billion-dollar companies and win?
Marie Martens, co-founder of Tally, a free online form builder, did just that. She and her partner built Tally without any outside funding. In just five years, they’ve grown it to $2 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
They now have a team of just five members.

In a recent interview on Wes Bush’s ProductLead podcast, Martens shared how they took on giants like Google Forms & Typeform and won.

You can follow the same strategy and build a thriving business in a highly commoditized space.

1. Offer a Genuinely Valuable Free Tier

Google Forms is free. But it lacks a professional look. Businesses don’t really like to use it with their clients.
Typeform has a sleek design and friendly UX. But its free tier is frustrating. If your form gains any sort of traction, you’ll have to pay for it. It allows just 10 responses per month before hitting the paywall.
Tally took a completely different approach. They offer unlimited form submissions on their free tier.
Forms are inherently viral. Every form includes a “powered by Tally” text. The more people use and share them, the more brand awareness Tally gains. So the free tier fueled their organic growth.

2. Use Pricing as Your Competitive Advantage

Big companies like Typeform can’t afford to copy Tally’s pricing model.

They have investors to satisfy. Large teams to pay. Revenue targets to hit. If they cut prices, they’d lose millions. Their investors wouldn’t allow it.
Tally has no outside investors. That gives them the freedom to price aggressively. This creates a moat that bigger competitors can’t cross.

3. Focus on Doing One Thing Exceptionally Well

Tally’s competitor constantly try to expand horizontally (e-signing, PDF generation, etc.) But Tally stays laser-focused on their core product: making online forms simple and delightful.
According to Martens, they focus on paper cuts, not shiny new features. In their early days, they even had a Slack group for all their customers where they’re constantly looking for small improvements.
But they had to close it after about 4000 people. Their small team couldn’t handle that much feedback.

5. Actually Do the Work

Building a business isn’t glamorous. In the early days, Martens spent six months doing cold outreach. She sent DMs, waited for replies and followed up relentlessly.

According to Martens, success comes from showing up every day and doing the boring work.

Want to hear the full story? You can watch the interview on YouTube. You can also subscribe to the ProductLed podcast on any podcast app.

How to Make Your Website More Trustworthy in Seconds

No one will buy from you if they don’t trust you. So how do you establish credibility when you’re a new company?

Andreas Just recently shared a simple strategy to quickly build trust with your website visitors.

When visitors land on your website, they see your banner first. You only have a few seconds to grab their attention and convince them to stay.
One way to do this? Add credibility markers right in your banner.

Just shared an example from the startup Seamailer (pictured above).

They display their Product Hunt badges (Product of the Day and Product of the Week) right above their call-to-action button. This signals strong social proof.
“No credit card required” note shows users can sign up for free. They also promise 24/7 support. This reassures visitors they’re a reliable company.
You don’t need Product Hunt badges to apply this strategy. Take Nomad List, for example:
They highlight their popularity and key features. They also include press quotes from media outlets.
You could also add customer testimonials and product ratings.
Small things like these can make a big difference in how visitors perceive your brand.

You can read the full article from Andreas Just here and check out his newsletter for similar insights.

đź“– Book of the Week: 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

This week, I want to highlight The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing. It is written by Al Ries and Jack Trout, two of the world’s most renowned marketing strategists.

They’ve worked with top companies like Apple, AT&T, and Procter & Gamble.
In this book, they share 22 timeless ideas that can help you build a powerful brand and stay ahead of the competition.

Here they are:

Law 1: The Law of Leadership

It’s better to be first than it is to be better.

It’s much easier to get into the mind first than to try to convince someone you have a better product than the one that did get there first.

Law 2: The Law of Category

If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not “How is this product better?” but rather “First what?” In other words, what category is this new product first in?

Law 3: The Law of The Mind

It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

Being first in the marketplace is important only to the extent that it allows you to get in the mind first.

Law 4: The Law of Perception

Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perception.

There is no objective reality. There are no facts. There are no best products. All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect. The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.

Law 5: The Law of Focus

The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.

A company can become incredibly successful if it can find a way to own a word in the mind of the prospect. E.g. Merceders owns engineering, Volvo owns safety.

Law 6: The Law of Exclusivity

Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.
When a competitor owns a word or position in the prospect’s mind, it is futile to attempt to own the same word.

Law 7: The Law of The Ladder

The strategy you use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder.
All products are not created equal. There’s a hierarchy in the mind that prospects use in making decisions.

For each category, there is a product ladder in the mind. On each rung is a brand name. Your marketing strategy should depend on how soon you got into the mind and consequently which rung of the ladder you occupy.

Law 8: The Law of Duality

In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race.
Early on, a new category is a ladder of many rungs. Over time the category usually winds up as a titanic battle between two major players—usually the old reliable brand and the new upstart.

Law 9: The Law of Opposite

If you’re shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader.

You must discover the essence of the leader and then present the prospect with the opposite. (In other words, don’t try to be better, try to be different.)

Law 10: The Law of Division

Over time, a category will divide and become two or more categories. Computers, for example, became mainframes, workstations, personal computers, laptops, notebooks, etc.

It’s better to be early than late to exploit a new category. But be prepared to spend time waiting for things to develop.

Law 11: The Law of Perspective

Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time.
Any sort of couponing, discounts, or sales tends to educate consumers to buy only when they can get a deal. So a short-term sales boost reduces revenue in the long-term.

Law 12: The Law of Line Extension

There’s an irresistible pressure to extend the equity of the brand.

When you try to be all things to all people, you inevitably wind up in trouble. If you want to be successful today, you have to narrow the focus in order to build a position in the prospect’s mind.

Law 13: The Law of Sacrifice

You have to give up something in order to get something.

Instead of trying to be big, highly diversified generalists, you need to become small, narrowly focused specialists. There are three things you can sacrifice: product line, target market, and constant change.

Law 14: The Law of Attributes

For every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute.
Too often a company attempts to emulate the leader. But it’s much better to search for an opposite attribute that will allow you to play off against the leader.

Law 15: The Law of Candor

When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.

When a company starts a message by admitting a problem, people tend to, almost instinctively, open their minds.

Law 16: The Law of Singularity

In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results.
History teaches that the only thing that works in marketing is the single, bold stroke. Furthermore, in any given situation there is only one move that will produce substantial results.

Law 17: The Law of Predictability

Unless you write your competitor’s plans, you can’t predict the future.

With hundreds of computers and an army of meteorologists, no one can predict the weather three days in advance, so how do you expect to predict your market three years in advance?
Instead, build an enormous amount of flexibility into your organization. Be willing to change and change quickly if you are to survive in the long term.

Law 18: The Law of Success

Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.
When people become successful, they tend to become less objective. They often substitute their own judgment for what the market wants.

Law 19: The Law of Failure

Failure is to be expected and accepted.

Too many companies try to fix things rather than drop things. A better strategy is to recognize failure early and cut your losses.

Law 20: The Law of Hype

The situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.
When things are going well, a company doesn’t need the hype. When you need the hype, it usually means you’re in trouble.

Law 21: The Law of Acceleration

Successful programs are not built on fads, they’re built on trends.

A fad is a wave in the ocean, and a trend is the tide. A fad gets a lot of hype, and a trend gets very little.

Law 22: The Law of Resources

Without adequate funding, an idea won’t get off the ground.

Even the best idea in the world won’t go very far without the money to get it off the ground.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have found at least some of these tips helpful.

Until next week!

Sayed Bin Habib

Co-Founder, Startup Blitz

Follow me on LinkedIn / Website

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