Overview of #169: Practical Pivot and Relaunch Created Profitable 200% Growth - Natalie Barbu
This episode of the Practical Founders Podcast (host Greg Head) features Natalie Barbu, CEO and co‑founder of Rella — a social media content collaboration and project-management tool for social teams. Natalie tells the story of Rella 1.0 (raised $1M, struggled, near shutdown), the August 2024 pivot to Rella 2.0, and the rapid, profitable growth that followed: from a cold relaunch to nearly $2M ARR in roughly a year, while remaining lean (4 founders, now hiring 2). Key themes: focused ICP, early monetization, founder‑led customer feedback, content-driven GTM (viral skit), and a pragmatic, measured approach to adding AI (their “Ella” assistant).
Key highlights and metrics
- Rella 1.0: raised ~$1M, pre‑revenue, broad target; ran out of funds and nearly shut down.
- Pivot to Rella 2.0: relaunched August 2024 as a focused product for social media teams/agencies.
- Growth timeline (post-pivot):
- Viral skit video → immediate spike in trials.
- Monthly revenue progression cited: Oct ~$3.5K → Nov ~$21K → Dec ~$45K.
- Profitability reached by February (post-pivot).
- ~11 months after relaunch: hit $1M ARR; by interview time ~ $1.9M ARR and on track to $2M ARR in November — goal to hit $3M early next year and ultimately $10M ARR.
- Team & hiring: 4 founding team members (2 engineers, Natalie, and a head-of-product/customer-success designer); hiring two full-time roles — one engineer and one community/growth associate.
- Funding stance: previously raised; current growth profitable and non‑dilutive — not planning to raise imminently.
Product & differentiation
- Product positioning: “Project management for social teams” — describes the product as somewhere between Notion and a content scheduler; targets social media managers, agencies, freelancers and teams who coordinate ideation → approval → posting.
- Core value: consolidate fragmented toolchains (document trackers, schedulers, approval tools) into a single collaborative workflow to reduce copy/paste and duplicated work.
- Pricing model: per-seat pricing (aligned with project-management tools like Notion/ClickUp) rather than per‑account, which better serves agencies managing many client accounts with small teams.
- Trial model: two‑week free trial with credit card required — no perpetual free tier.
- AI feature: “Ella” — an AI content creative strategist that:
- Connects to social accounts and analytics to learn tone and performance.
- Generates content ideas, scripts, captions, recommends platforms, and schedules entries into Rella.
- Works as an assistant/agent to plan a month’s content in about an hour.
- Product process: team ships fast, listens to user requests, uses Canny for feature requests and maintains a public roadmap.
Go‑to‑market and growth tactics
- Viral content: a simple 30‑second skit on Rella’s social channels showing the pain of multiple tools drove a major spike in trials and awareness (Instagram + TikTok).
- Founder-led customer interactions: founders (including Natalie) handled frontline customer support and ran many one‑on‑one demos — vital for feedback and conversions.
- Community-first strategy: partnering with paid and unpaid social‑media manager communities, presenting demos to small groups, and leveraging word‑of‑mouth.
- Demos & personalization: offered one-on-one demos at low price tiers to gather product feedback and increase conversion; did ~10 demos/day during early growth spurts.
- Affiliate + influencer: an affiliate program (~600 signups) paying $10/referral and selective influencer campaigns (variable ROI; often brand-awareness plays a role).
Core lessons & why Rella 2.0 worked
- Charge from day one — don’t rely on a free tier:
- Free users create vanity metrics and false signals; paying customers provide actionable feedback and a true product/market fit signal.
- Narrow your ICP and solve one acute problem:
- Rella dropped creators from its primary audience and focused on agencies and social teams; building for “everyone” diluted product clarity.
- Founder proximity to customers:
- Doing support, demos, and rapid iterations built trust, surfaced real needs, and drove word-of-mouth.
- Intentional AI adoption:
- Don’t add AI for buzz. Build analytics and product structure first, then integrate AI where it genuinely saves time and automates meaningful work.
- Keep the team lean and pragmatic:
- High leverage with a small team; aim to scale revenue without proportionally inflating headcount.
Product roadmap & operational choices
- Public roadmap and Canny for requests to transparently collect and prioritize customer feedback.
- Prioritize deeper features over horizontal expansion — go deeper before going wider.
- Maintain direct support ties (founders answering support) for faster learning loops and higher product empathy.
Recommendations / Actionable takeaways for founders
- Start monetized: use a paid trial or low-cost plan with a credit card required; avoid perpetual free tiers that hide true demand.
- Pick a narrow ICP and focus on solving their most painful workflows before expanding.
- Get in front of customers as much as possible: run demos, join community groups, and do frontline support to collect honest feedback.
- Use content strategically: simple, empathetic skits that show a clear problem → solution can produce outsized organic traction.
- Add AI only when your product has the data/structure to make it genuinely useful, and integrate it into workflows (not just as a standalone generator).
- Keep headcount lean; hire when it clears specific bottlenecks (e.g., engineering capacity, growth/community work).
Team, hires & company goals
- Founders: 4 (two software co‑founders, Natalie as CEO/content/marketing, and a head-of-product/customer success who started as designer).
- New hires planned: 1 software engineer; 1 community & growth associate.
- Short-term ARR goal: 3M near-term; long-term target: 10M ARR with a lean team (aiming for ~10 people at that scale if possible).
- Exit preference: open to acquisition by a buyer that will scale Rella and its vision.
Notable quotes
- “If you do not have paying customers, you have no idea what's working and what's not working.”
- “We dropped creators completely — creators are really hard to sell to. They’re scrappy and tend not to pay for tools early.”
- “We would do 10 demos a day at one point. That’s only 10 people, but it was the stage we were at.”
- “We didn’t want to include AI just for the sake of AI… we wanted it to actually save time and be useful.”
Quick reference: what changed between Rella 1.0 → 2.0
- Rella 1.0: broad audience (creators + others), free tier, many features, low monetization → poor signals and burn through funding.
- Rella 2.0: targeted audience (social teams/agencies), per-seat pricing, no free tier (trial with CC), focused feature set, founder-led support/demos, content-driven growth, intentional AI integration → rapid, profitable ARR growth.
Credits: Host Greg Head; Guest Natalie Barbu (Rella).