Jake Kassan | Hustle Con 2018

About this video

Jake Kassan, founder and CEO of Movement watches, discusses how he built the company to track $100M in revenue by 2018 with zero outside funding and only 35 employees. He shares his bootstrapping journey from a $5,000 credit card investment and IndieGoGo campaign success, through strategic use of early Facebook advertising and Reddit growth hacks, to becoming a global direct-to-consumer brand.

Key takeaways

• Jake raised $300K from an IndieGoGo campaign after spending just $5K on samples and leveraging Reddit growth hacks (creating multiple accounts to upvote posts), demonstrating that scrappy, low-cost customer acquisition channels can fund early traction
• Movement stayed profitable on every order from day one by necessity as a bootstrapped company, contrasting with venture-backed competitors willing to lose money short-term; Jake reinvested early profits into inventory and paid himself only $10K in year one while scaling to $1M revenue with just 2-3 full-time employees
• Jake attributes scaling from $1M to $100M revenue to disciplined focus on high-ROI channels (early Facebook ads at $10-15 cost per acquisition), building community with first backers, positioning the brand as a lifestyle beyond just a product, and later testing new channels like TV, radio, and Twitch where larger brands haven’t yet optimized
• Key operational decisions that enabled lean scaling: choosing Shopify over Magento ($2K vs $30K), teaching himself Facebook advertising instead of hiring initially, moving in with parents to minimize burn, and cold-networking with operators at successful brands to learn acquisition strategies

Episode details: published July 20, 2018 · 6.8K views · 30:44 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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