From Code to +£15M ARR: Bootstrapping and Scaling a Tech Startup
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Every founder faces moments where they realise they don't know what they don't know. But how do you scale a business when there's no manual to follow?
In this episode of Spotlight on B2B Marketing, host Karen Lloyd welcomes Nick Mason, co-founder of Turtl, to share his journey from writing a few lines of code with his co-founder whilst on a project at Oxford University to building a revenue-generating content platform now supporting hundreds of brands.
Nick's story is one of learning through doing. Bootstrapping to £1M ARR with no funding, navigating the challenges of what to do when you don't know what to do, and ultimately competing with giants like Adobe in the crowded MarTech space. The conversation also explores how ABM teams can demonstrate ROI through better measurement, personalisation at scale, and creating feedback loops that drive continuous improvement.
From technical founder to CEO, Nick shares the hard-won lessons about continuous learning, the strategic importance of marketing, and how to stand out when you're the underdog.
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KAREN & NICK
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ How to bootstrap a tech startup from initial concept to 1M ARR with no funding
✔️ The founder's journey from software engineer to CEO and what that transition requires
✔️ Strategies for identifying and overcoming "what you don't know you don't know"
✔️ How to compete with major players like Adobe when you're a smaller company
✔️ Why marketing must be intrinsically linked to business strategy, not siloed
✔️ The importance of mentors, advisors, and continuous self-education in scaling
✔️ How to navigate from bootstrapping to Series A funding
✔️ Building a marketing team that influences product, positioning, and go-to-market strategy
✔️ The value of being noteworthy and differentiated (even if it means dressing up in a turtle costume!)
✔️ How ABM teams can scale programmes, set up feedback loops, and connect content to pipeline
EPISODE OUTLINE AND HIGHLIGHTS
[01:40] The origin story and bootstrapping journey to Series A funding
[04:28] "Every day is a school day": the continuous learning mindset
[05:56] Why marketing and business strategy are intrinsically linked
[06:38] Using your own product in your own marketing (and the signals it generates)
[08:05] Case study: how one sales team beat their annual target with a single deal
[09:46] Personalising ABM content at scale: from 10 people to 10,000
[11:14] Doubling win rates: the 8x8 telecom case study (13% to 26%)
[12:26] The biggest ABM challenge: setting up feedback loops and scaling
[13:35] Moving beyond MQLs: metrics that actually matter for ABM
[17:54] When should you give up on ABM? (Spoiler: probably never, if you have the right data)
[20:50] Using AI for deep personalisation: opportunities and pitfalls
[23:45] Breaking marketing patterns: staying ahead of the curve
[26:06] Competing as David against Goliath: standing out in the MarTech space
[28:35] Why the marketing leader should influence product and positioning, not just execute
[29:53] A CEO's perspective: why marketing is "one of the most important things we do"
THE FOUNDER'S CONSTANT CHALLENGE - KNOWING WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
One of the most honest and relatable insights Nick shares is about the continuous challenge of identifying gaps in your own knowledge as a founder. Unlike established roles with clear career paths, founding and scaling a business means constantly encountering new problems you've never faced before.
"One of the hardest things is working out what you don't know, which is holding you back. So is it that I don't know what a good person in this role looks like? Is that the thing that's holding me back? Or is it that our strategy isn't properly aligned and I don't know something about strategy? Or is it some condition in the market that I need to work out how to circumvent?"
Nick emphasises that your job as a founder and CEO is to understand these challenges, work out which ones you don't know about, and either upgrade your skill set or find the person who can help you overcome that particular challenge. This requires a combination of books, mentors, advisors, and self-education.
The phrase Nick uses weekly with his mentor says it all: "Every day is a school day." Whether you're growing 100% year-over-year and need to scale a particular function, or you're tackling a strategic challenge, you'll always have gaps in your knowledge. The key is developing the self-awareness to identify them and the humility to seek help.
This mindset of continuous learning and adaptation is what separates founders who scale successfully from those who get stuck at each new growth stage.
SCALING ABM: FROM FEEDBACK LOOPS TO COMMERCIAL OUTCOMES
Throughout the conversation, Nick reveals why so many ABM programmes struggle to scale and deliver ROI—and more importantly, how to fix it. The issue isn't whether ABM works; it's about setting up the right measurement and feedback systems from day one.
"The big challenge that we see is setting up those feedback loops. What tends to happen is that we can prove ABM at a low scale, but then in order to really double, triple, 10x the surface area of that ABM program, you need to add a lot more resource because there's an awful lot of manual processes and things going on."
Nick emphasises that the ultimate lagging indicator, pipeline and revenue must be trackable from the start. This isn't just about justifying spend; it's about creating a learning system. When you can track from activity to engagement to commercial outcomes, you build a flywheel: understanding which content resonates with which accounts, refining your approach, and continuously improving results.
The key is personalisation at scale combined with quality signals. Rather than sales teams chasing hundreds of accounts, consider grading accounts by engagement and work from the top down. One client, 8x8, doubled their win rate from 13% to 26% in under a year by putting salespeople on the right opportunities at the right times based on engagement intelligence.
Nick's advice is clear: if ABM isn't working, the question isn't whether to abandon it. It's why it's not working. With proper measurement, you should always be able to diagnose the problem: Were the inputs insufficient? Did people not engage? Was it the wrong content or wrong channels? Did engagement not convert to pipeline? Each answer points to a specific fix.
The future of ABM, according to Nick, involves AI-powered deep personalisation, but with an important caveat. Mass-personalised emails scraped from LinkedIn are already white noise. The next evolution requires leveraging what your company uniquely knows about an account in credible, authentic ways that AI can scale without losing the human touch.
KEY ADVICE FOR LEADERS
1. Embrace the "Every Day is a School Day" Mindset
"I have a phrase that I use every week with one of my mentors, which is every day is a school day. The thing is with starting a business is that there's no manual. Every day brings new challenges and every stage of growth brings new things that you need to think about."
One of the hardest things as a founder is working out what you don't know which is holding you back. Is it that you don't know what a good person in a role looks like? Is your strategy misaligned? Is there a market condition you need to circumvent? Your job as CEO is to systematically identify these knowledge gaps and either upgrade your skill set or find the right people to help. Use mentors, advisors, books, and self-education strategically at every stage of growth.
2. Make Marketing Central to Business Strategy, Not a Separate Function
"I can't imagine a world in which I didn't believe in marketing as probably one of the most important things that we do. It is, after all, sort of how we relate to the market and the market is the thing that will determine our success," says Nick.
Don't treat marketing as just an execution function that promotes what's already been decided. Marketing's job is to understand the market deeply and feed back into what you build, how you position it, and how you think about competitors. Your marketing leader should be instrumental in defining not just marketing activities, but the direction of other parts of the business as well. If you don't align your products, services, and messages properly with the market, you can't get anywhere.
3. Focus on Substance Beneath the Style
"When you're talking to the guy in the turtle outfit and thinking, oh, that was a lot of fun, you actually realise there's a very serious message underneath there... it's really important that all that stuff lines up and it's credible at every link in the chain."
Standing out in a crowded market is important. Whether that's showing up in a turtle costume or finding other ways to command attention. But substance must underpin everything. Your differentiation should be based on genuine value that solves real market problems, not just clever marketing. Ensure your entire operation, from how you show up at events to your core product offering to your customer results is credible, aligned, and delivers on the promise. That's how smaller players compete with giants like Adobe.
TODAY’S GUEST
Nick Mason is co-founder and CEO of Turtl. It is the first Revenue Content™ Platform – built to help B2B marketers turn content into pipeline and prove its impact on revenue.
The company, based in London, supports hundreds of teams, including Cisco and Informa, in creating high-performing, personalised content that scales, boosts efficiency, and delivers measurable pipeline and revenue impact.
Nick originally worked in software engineering and product development. This included designing exam systems for the Royal College of GPs.
Turtl began as an idea in 2015 and a few lines of code conceived by founders Nick Mason and Mark Sallows, when they were working on a project at the University of Oxford. The coding was an attempt to apply psychological principles to content and content marketing. The company grew from there.
OUR HOST
Karen Lloyd is a passionate marketing head-hunter and recruitment expert specialising in marketing and C-suite in B2B industries. With over 25 years of experience in the recruitment industry, Karen brings a unique depth of expertise that sets her apart from most recruiters.
Over her career, Karen has accumulated a wealth of experience that includes serving as a Board Director and being actively involved in growing a business for 13 years. Karen has been a part of five start-ups, giving her first-hand knowledge of the critical importance of hiring the right people.
Currently, Karen is the founder and Director of Armstrong Lloyd. She leads a very special team that partners with businesses and empowers them to build industry-leading marketing teams for some of the most exciting B2B brands - from small agile and disruptive start-ups to global giants providing a wealth of product and service offerings.
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