1Mby1M Deal Radar 2019: PayKickstart, Carmel, IN

PayKickstart is a SaaS company that is reinventing the modern-day shopping cart and affiliate management. Its platform helps thousands of businesses and entrepreneurs sell their products and/or services online, maximize customer lifetime value, retain more of their customers, and automate subscription commerce. I

PayKickStart was founded in 2014 by Mark Thompson and Matt Cullen who had been selling software online for over a decade. After using and switching between many shopping cart platforms, they struggled to find the right platform that offered flexibility, functionality, and security. They also felt the need for an API that would allow for billing and checkouts and a way to integrate with membership services. Most of this had to be done manually and was taking away too much time. So they decided to build their own platform called PayKickstart.

PayKickstart started out as a simple internal solution – a shopping cart integrated with Stripe and PayPal that can process payments. Over time the idea grew, and they added additional functionalities such as customizable checkout page templates and coupon code management. Soon, there were dozens of people per week contacting them every week to know more about the project. That point turned into an AH-HA moment for us.

Today, PayKickstart helps vendors set up their campaigns, products and sales funnels, charge one-time payments or recurring payments for subscriptions, set up free or paid trials, and integrate with payment gateways and other platforms seamlessly. It focuses on boosting conversions and optimizing the checkout process by removing unnecessary friction for customers when purchasing online. Its features such as Customizable Checkout page templates, 1-Click Upsells, Order bumps, exit-intent popups, and cart abandonment emails help its vendors increase their conversions. It also has options for Vendors to create an Affiliate platform for their Campaigns where affiliates can find and promote products to earn commission.

PayKickstart has a recurring subscription-based pricing model. It currently offers three different plans: Basic, Professionals and Premium plans which offer features that are useful to any business, from small to enterprise businesses. Its prices start at 22$ per month if paid annually, or 29$ per month if paid Monthly.

Back in 2015 after building the first version of PayKickstart and a lot of testing, PayKickstart started focusing its go-to-market strategy. Its greatest asset in the beginning was a 100k-deep email list of clients that previously bought Kickstart products. It also conducted live webinars that helped it generate an initial group of about 100 vendors.

Even with this great start it was hard to build and maintain the momentum. Its next approach was to try basically everything and see what works. It did a promotion on ProductHunt, Facebook Ads, blog content, cold email campaigns, answering questions on Quora, etc. Luckily, its sister company Digital Kickstart, which was its main source of funding, was very profitable. PayKickstart recently went over $1MM in ARR.

This segment is a part in the series : 1Mby1M Deal Radar 2019