Tally
What they Do Best
Tally is an intuitive form builder catering to makers and non-coders.
Main Industry
Software
Platform
Independent/Standalone
Type of Product
Desktop/Web App
Target
B2B + B2C
Price Range
$49 - $99
Business Model
Subscription
Free Plan
Free Plan
Pricing Details
Revenue Estimates
$840,000
Monthly Website Traffic
4,730,000
Revenue Per Traffic
$0.01
Idea to Money
Crossed $5K MRR and 11.000 users in a year.
Founders
Employees
3
Year Started
2020
Dedication
Marie & Filip devoted themselves full-time to Tally after their previous startup suffered severely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Market Insights / Trends
online form
Industry Incumbent
Typeform ($75M/year)
How They Came Up With The Idea
Filip and Marie identified a gap in the form-building market, noting that while options like Google Forms offered functionality, they lacked aesthetics, and alternatives such as Typeform, Jotform, and Formstack quickly led to paywalls and could become expensive. They saw an opportunity for a new form builder that was easy to use, visually appealing, and free without restrictions on usage. Inspired by the editor approach of Notion, they aimed to create a user-friendly, efficient, and enjoyable form-building experience that allowed users to start with a blank slate and easily add various types of content. This led to the creation of Tally.so, a tool designed to meet these needs.
How They Built The First Version
In 2014, Filip embarked on a weekend project, launching 'Tally' on Product Hunt, a straightforward polling tool that required no signup or account creation. Despite its initial success as the number 1 product of the day, Filip chose not to pursue the idea further. Fast forward to August 2020, Filip, along with his team, decided to work on a minimum viable product (MVP) of a form builder, initially sharing it with friends and family. This MVP was quite basic, allowing for the insertion of questions but lacking the ability to publish a form.
Without a large network to leverage, they began their outreach by contacting creators, Indie Hackers, and startup founders, mainly through Product Hunt and Twitter. Despite numerous rejections, their efforts paid off as they managed to build a community of early users and ambassadors who provided valuable feedback.
Throughout their journey, they committed to regularly introducing new features and fostering their relationship with their users. They actively sought feedback and facilitated discussions through a Slack channel, which grew into a vibrant community of over 2000 passionate members. This approach of building in public and engaging continuously with their user base was instrumental in the development and refinement of Tally.
Growth Channels
Their main customer acquisition channels were:
- Product Hunt and Twitter: The founders scanned Product Hunt and Twitter, made lists of hundreds of prospects, and started doing cold outreach, asking for their feedback. Often without success, but those who did take the time to reply became part of their community of early users and ambassadors.
- 'Powered by Tally' badge on free forms
- No-code communities
Main Growth Channel
Product Hunt
Twitter
Tech Stack
- Node.js
- TypeScript
- Express
- Sequelize
- MySQL
- React
- Next.js
- Styled Components
- Cloud Run on GCP
Tools
- Notion
Full Case Study