GrowthBar

01The full story

Mark Spera and Haley Friedman built GrowthBar from a pain inside their marketing agency, Growth Marketing Pro. Their agency produced SEO content for different clients, and each project involved research, understanding the client's business, applying its voice, and trying to predict what would rank. They first made an editor toolbar that scored a post's SEO optimization, then added AI writing after getting access to OpenAI's beta. GrowthBar became an AI writing tool for SEO, with planning and rank-tracking features around the core editor. The founders had already built an organic audience through a digital marketing blog: about 50,000 monthly organic visitors and an email list of 15,000 to 20,000. They launched to that audience, reaching about $5,000 MRR in a month or two, but churn after roughly two months exposed a retention problem. Spera said the business had $318,000 in revenue when sold. A first $1,000 day in Stripe made the opportunity feel real, while the founders' agency ultimately won their internal growth contest and they chose to focus their time there.