Featured Connect Member: Sophia O'Neal

Sophia O'Neal

CEO, Ignore No More

One sentence to describe your company

Outsourced marketing team for bootstrapped SaaS Co's

Can you share your journey into the SaaS industry and what motivated you to start your own boostrapped SaaS company?

I’ve known since i was a kid that I wanted to be my own boss, and over time that morphed into wanting to work in tech - but without learning how to code.

Marketing was a natural fit for my mix of strategy mindset, dot-connecting approach to problems solving, and design skills. I worked in-and-out of a lot of marketing roles (Chick-fil-A!) and at agencies working on big clients like Google and Adidas, starting lots of side projects in the sustainable fashion space, but hadn’t found an area of tech i was passionate in until i started - wait for it - a camping goods startup in college with my best friend.

We wanted to make it easier for beginners to find camping online across any site without having to specifically search for beginner camping gear. ⛺

While looking for a website builder that could handle the MVP (because I can’t code) I stumbled onto Webflow. And then Figma by extension to be able to design the site. I knew “of” SaaS before then, but that was my introduction to the types of companies that fell in that bucket. Plus the sheer size of the space - and how much was left to be built!

Fast forward a bit (and 10,000 hours of SaaS marketing research!), and I took a job leading marketing at a $10M B2B SaaS co, and then left that job to start Ignore No More in late 2021! 💜

Ignore No More is 100% bootstrapped and while it hasn’t been easy, I wouldn’t trade it! I love the freedom and flexibility it gives me and ability to take projects i believe in and the team and I want to work on.

As much as I love running INM, i want to build a SaaS myself too! I did a bunch of info tool launches to get my feet wet, then built and launched Tangram in spring 2021, a marketing plan and daily task breakdown for small businesses and SaaS startups, after seeing so many SaaS founders struggle with deciding where to begin and remembering the constant struggles of my small business-owner friends balance marketing with running daily operations.

I got 50+ signups on the waitlist in 2 days and people DM’ing me on Twitter asking when they could pay!

I was in the works of getting a more functional version out in 2023 but Chat-GPT3 really killed the need. 😂

This year I’m back to building more small marketing tools with a no-code stack, testing them, getting validation and either building them bigger or moving on to the next thing. 💪🏽 🚀

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced thus far and how did you solved it?

There are more challenges popping up every day, but usually they come down to my management learning curve and gauging cash flow.

The biggest challenge I’ve had to face was getting those first initial clients. I was so broke and bad at cold emails, and most of my past work was under NDA so I couldn’t put it up as case studies. To get around it, I posted on IndieHackers (on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving 2021 no less) that i would build a brand + landing page + marketing strategy for 4 SaaS startups in a week each.

It worked. I got 4 (which ended up being whittled down to 3 companies) and built their brand, landing page, and marketing strategy for them in exchange for quotes and being able to use the work product in perpetuity. I also built the brands in public on Twitter (RIP 😂) and talked about branding and messaging on the platform constantly.

It helped me get over my nerves of talking into the internet void, and taught me how to explain the how, what, and why of marketing to a developer-based audience instead of my previous audience of small business owners or fellow marketers. Plus it helped me build my initial audience. Several of the friends i made because of that launch are still trusted mentors! ⚡

The second biggest challenge was learning how to manage a team, especially one with so many cultures and approaches to work. Starting every conversation with questions, assuming nothing, and having business mentors who understand the industry (agency and SaaS) from multiple countries has been a lifesaver! It gives me a mirror to see where i’ve made a management error and where things need better communication to overcome any cultural misunderstandings. Now my team is one of the biggest reasons i love coming to work (on Slack, we’re 100% remote!) but it took a good year for the communication and culture to make that a reality.

Which skills of yours can you help our community members with?

I’m dying to answer questions about branding, landing page copy, and nitty-gritty marketing execution. I will reply with a ridiculous amount of caffeinated bounce! ☕