This is the story of how Ross Andrew Paquette bootstrapped Maropost to success with innovation and a customer-centric culture in the workplace.
Maropost, as described by its CEO, Ross Andrew Paquette, is a “self-reliant” marketing automation service provider. Its conception began inside of Paquette’s own apartment 8 years ago while he was working in the SaaS and email marketing industry — which, while booming at the time, had become stagnant with poor customer service and a lack of innovation.
Despite being bootstrapped from the get-go, Ross Andrew Paquette and his team managed to elevate Maropost to become one of Canada’s fastest-growing and most profitable tech companies today.
They scaled up so effectively, in fact, that, in their early years, they were able to jump from being a $3.3 million revenue company to a $13 million revenue company in a single year — with just 10 people in the company at the time! (According to this Podcast from The Kim Barrett Show)
That brings us to our question… How was Maropost able to scale their business so effectively? Learn more about Maropost’s unconventional, but incredibly effective, stages of growth below:
1st Stage of Growth: Bootstrapping
The first stage of Maropost’s growth happened inside of Ross Andrew Paquette’s 2011 apartment. At this stage, Paquette had only his ideas and his experience in the SaaS and email marketing industry to guide him.
Paquette had a clear vision for Maropost’s future from the start, however, which is what ultimately set Maropost apart from similar organizations. He knew what he wanted to do, and that was to build a service that put innovation and their customers above all else — it’s this vision that can be credited for much of Maropost’s success moving forward.
2nd Stage of Growth: Innovation & Building Relationships
In an article with Forbes, while trying to describe Maropost’s early growth, Paquette says, “By bootstrapping, we became self-reliant. We took on a lot of roles and decisions that would have otherwise been taken care of – or taken over – by investors.”
He also, in an interview, described Maropost’s first year of business as ‘calm.’ Unlike other startup companies, Paquette said that their ‘goal wasn’t to raise capital.’ Instead, they focused on building Maropost up through innovation that fueled the strong customer-centric culture he and his team had built during that period.
Paquette also credits a lot of their success at this stage of growth to Maropost’s ‘loyal’ customer base. And believes that it was because they were able to build strong positive relationships with their clients and partners that they grew so rapidly during this time.
In fact, as they moved forward from here, Maropost, once again, subverted traditional growth by, as described by Paquette, “…looking to create a new category — something we could own… Our focus was a lot more internal. It’s a lot less about what our competitors were doing and a lot more about what more we could be doing to simplify our customers’ lives.”
3rd Stage of Growth: Leveraging Core Values
The ‘final’ stage of growth, the one that Maropost is at present, is one that is represented by the leveraging of core values. Or, as Ross Andrew Paquette describes it, ‘keeping on with their mission.’ That is, to build and perfect Maropost to meet every single one of their customers’ expectations moving forward.
Again, for Maropost, it is this exact vision that has allowed them to scale their business so effectively, albeit unconventionally. Maropost scaled up, not by constantly raising capital or looking for funding like most businesses do, but by creating a service that is never stagnant and one that is deserving of their clients’ loyalty.
