Table of Contents
- Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
- How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
- Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
- What other products are you working on?
Vadim Zhirkov is the founder of Private Equity List - Freemium private equity and venture capital database
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
Private Equity List - freemium database that features over 5500+ PE, VC investors and is aimed at finding investors in 3 clicks without distracting the user with irrelevant information (news, analytics).
Due to my work as VC I need to have fast and most complete PE/VC list to find potential investors for my portfolio companies and my clients (a lot of them come from non-US/EU regions) everyday, but:
- Crunchbase is so messy and has incomplete lists of investors from Middle East, Africa as well as other exotic regions in a user-friendly way
- I don't really like investor Airtables due to their lack of consolidation
- Pitchbook and other services are too expensive
So I created a consolidated database that focuses on hot industries and more exotic regions Middle East and Africa, Asia (APAC) + small cap funds, which can help startups to get funding.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
It took around 5-6 months to acquire first 50 customers that paid. The growth strategy was mostly content marketing in social media, Medium + I paid a great deal to SEO (correct wording and etc.) at start of the project. SEO takes some time but now Private Equity List has 1-3 ranks in google searches for some quires like "Gaming private equity", which brings great traffic to website.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
Project is built on PHP, laravel, no challenges so far.
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
I use Ghost, Buffer, Canva for doing content marketing and writing articles.
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- SEO is very important, start think about it at start of the project
- Don't waste money on design and google ads
- Content marketing can be the best acquisition channel
- Use scalable business modelsUser path (sign up and etc.) is very important
- Turn on monetisation as soon as possible
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
- IndieHackers
- Discord
- ProductHunt
What other products are you working on?
Playsit is a mobile social network for gamers, MVP is ready and now we are searching for funding and growth of app
