Lloyed Lobo sent hundreds of cold emails trying to sell Boast.ai's R&D tax credit platform. Nobody replied. Then he stopped selling and started hosting 10-person meetups with free pizza - and B2B community building carried the company past $10M ARR without a marketing team.
In this episode, Lloyed reveals how community-led growth replaced traditional acquisition. You will learn how B2B community building grew from small meetups to 120,000 subscribers, why a newspaper column created SEO backlinks that fed the funnel, and how the growth equity firm that bought 52% of Boast discovered the company at a community event.
Boast.ai is a fintech platform with $20M+ ARR, 1,000+ customers, and 120+ team members. Lloyed also wrote the Wall Street Journal bestseller "From Grassroots to Greatness" on SaaS community building.
š Key Lessons
- šÆ B2B community building starts with small events: Lloyed's first meetups had 10-15 attendees with free pizza and tactical speakers. Those intimate settings built real relationships that turned into customers and referrals.
- š° Community-led growth eliminates traditional CAC: Boast.ai reached $5M ARR with no CRM, no marketing automation, and no marketing team through B2B community building alone.
- š¤ Ask your community for business directly: Most founders give value but never ask for the sale. Lloyed used a consultative approach and attendees who had received value were eager to work with Boast.
- š B2B community building compounds through partnerships: Speakers became mentors, sponsors became referral partners, and one partner alone drove $3M in revenue.
- š Variable rewards keep community engagement high: During COVID, twice-weekly live AMAs featuring different speakers grew the community-driven SaaS audience from 30,000 to 120,000 subscribers.
Chapters
- Introduction
- What Boast.ai does and the R&D tax credit opportunity
- Company metrics: $20M+ ARR, 120+ team, 1,000+ customers
- Growing up in the slums of Mumbai and war-torn Kuwait
- How the Gulf War taught community and entrepreneurship
- Failed startups before Boast and the path to co-founding
- Starting Boast as a services company with no money
- Why cold outreach failed and the pivot to community
- Building a newspaper column and SEO backlinks
- How a community event led to the growth equity deal
- Converting community members into paying customers
- Scaling from $5M to $10M ARR during the pandemic
- Hospitalized with bilateral COVID pneumonia
- Daughter's wake-up call and the identity crisis
- Depression, losing the tribe, and finding recovery
- The insight behind the book: companions matter most
- From Grassroots to Greatness - the Wall Street Journal bestseller
- Lightning round
Resources
