Hi @Krish! Good to reconnect with you.
We invested in affiliates and resellers in month #2 of the business. The reason for this was that as a former consultant myself, I knew the influence that I had over my small business customers to recommend the right solutions. So, in growing Trainual, I knew that relationships with other consultants and influencers would be a powerful way to build early trust around our brand.
We quickly grew to over 1,000 affiliates, and in the first year, they accounted for about 12% of our revenue. I think this created some word of mouth virality that we couldn’t have otherwise purchased at the time.
I had the advantage of working with my consulting clients and using Trainual internally before we ever launched Trainual as a public product. So, I’d recommend to other early-stage B2B founders that they look for early signs of validation from their first customers, and spend a lot of time with those customers to understand where they shop, where they learn, what podcasts they listen to, what books they read, what associations they participate in, and who influences them. Then, spend time getting aligned with those things to build trust with your ideal customers.