How Ahrefs hit 100M ARR with a team of 69 and 0 salespeople
Ahrefs is a popular SEO tool that marketing teams use to rank higher on Google. They have tools for link building, keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking and site audits.
The CEO, Dmitry, built his first document search engine at the age of 15. His interest in search engines never diminished, and he created the first Ahrefs product (backlinks index) in 2010.
Singapore based Ahrefs has since built the entire suite of SEO products a marketer would need to rank on Google. Within 11 years of starting Ahrefs, they've managed to almost hit 100M ARR. While this isn't unheard of, it is quite a feat considering their team is only 69 people, and they have no salespeople on board.
I've been an Ahrefs user and a long time fan of how they run the company. In this post, I try to break down some of their industry defying strategies.
At Ahrefs, marketing is centred around the product. Tim Soulo, the CMO of Ahrefs, attributes their marketing success to 3 core principles:
