$150k to $2M ARR Growth in 18 Months

What is Jet Admin?

Jet Admin started as a Django-based admin panel for back-office operations. Over time, it evolved into a no-code/low-code platform for building internal tools and admin panels on top of databases and APIs. The company grew steadily, driven by a product-led growth motion built from day one and clear positioning in the market.

Today, Jet Admin is a hybrid AI/no-code app builder for creating custom business apps — vendor portals, internal tools, and CRMs — with a suite of embedded AI tools that let users build faster.

The Challenge — Flat Traction with No Growth

At the end of 2019, Jet Admin had a functional product and one paying client. Two technical co-founders struggled to bring the product to a global market.

I joined in September 2019 as the founding generalist growth hire — tasked with building commercial traction for a product we all believed was ahead of its time.

Despite ongoing sales and marketing effort, every deal felt like an uphill battle. Self-serve users churned within the first month. The core problems were clear:

• No defined ICP. The team didn't know who to target or how to win against alternatives.
• Leaky product. Users bounced at every step. Even those who converted to paid churned quickly.
• No scalable acquisition channel. Multiple channels had been tested, but nothing broke through — it was spray and pray.
• Model confusion. No clarity on whether to invest in sales-led or product-led growth.
• Underoptimized monetization. Pricing and packaging weren't structured to maximize customer value.

In early 2020, after going through Y Combinator, I found the working go-to-market and product growth approach. From there, I never looked back — growing MRR more than 10x over a year and a half.

The Solution — Clear GTM Strategy and an Efficient Growth Engine

Discovery: Identifying What's Broken

I started with research. Talked to customers, prospects, and churned users. Analyzed target and adjacent markets to find the best way to position Jet Admin to win.

What I found was a fundamental mismatch: the ICP that gets real value from the product wasn't the one we were targeting, and our messaging didn't resonate with the right audience. That insight reshaped everything that followed.

GTM Strategy and Positioning

I rebuilt Jet Admin's positioning from the ground up — repositioning from a generic “admin and back-office” tool to a no-code business app builder designed specifically for internal tools, custom CRMs, and client portals.

Messaging shifted to anchor on jobs to be done. In an emerging no-code market without clear category boundaries, JTBD framing cut through the noise and made it immediately clear what the product does and who it's for. I also identified a strong pull from the market for customer portals — a use case that grew to account for nearly half of revenue by the end of the engagement.

• Rebuilt positioning around three high-value use cases: business web apps, internal tools, and client portals
• Anchored all messaging in JTBD to eliminate confusion in a blurry market category

  
• Identified and validated the customer portal opportunity as a major revenue driver
• Mapped competitive differentiators against popular alternatives

Website Redesign

I redesigned the website's visuals, structure, and narrative around the new positioning. In an emerging market where no-code use cases blurred into each other, the site needed to do the heavy lifting of explaining what the product actually does — clearly and convincingly.

The redesign improved sign-up conversion, but its bigger impact was upstream: it gave target users the conviction to actually try the product. That conviction translated into better activation rates before we even touched the activation flow itself.

• Redesigned homepage as a routing hub — generating interest and directing different ICPs to dedicated pages

  
• Created use case pages, feature pages, solution pages, and integration pages for different buyer angles
• Rebuilt the pricing page to reflect the new packaging structure
• Highlighted benefits and unique differentiators against alternatives

Activation Flow Redesign

I revamped the activation flow after experimenting with several approaches — starting from scratch, starting from templates, and starting with real customer data. The data-first approach won decisively.

I redesigned the flow so new users picked an integration first, connecting their own data before building anything. For users without a data source ready, we added a built-in database with selectable default schemas.

• Tested multiple activation approaches to identify the highest-performing entry point
• Redesigned the onboarding flow around a data-first experience
• Implemented a built-in database with default schemas as a fallback path
• Result: 3.5× activation rate after full redesign, with 30-day retention following suit

Content, Lifecycle, and SEO

I built the content engine across three layers: education to drive adoption, SEO to drive acquisition, and lifecycle campaigns to drive conversion and reactivation.

• Created an explainer video for the homepage and use-case-specific videos targeting high-relevance queries
• Built and launched “Jet University” — a video-based knowledge base for self-serve adoption

  
• Built a template library that doubled as conversion assets and SEO-ranked pages

  
• Created 20+ pages ranking for high-intent keywords, including bottom-of-funnel alternative and vs pages targeting competitor traffic

  
• Built 40+ use case pages that showcased what can be built with Jet Admin while ranking for solution-unaware searches
• Created integration pages targeting specific database, API, and external app keywords
• Ran lifecycle email campaigns for activation, reactivation, and promotional triggers

Launching a Suite of AI Products

As the product developed AI capabilities — chat-based SQL generation, HTTP integration creation, custom UI component generation, and full app prototyping — I mapped the product flows for new users to discover and adopt these features.

• Designed product flows for AI feature discovery and adoption within the existing user experience
• Created marketing narratives targeting the emerging AI-native audience
• Produced videos and marketing assets to explain and demonstrate the AI capabilities

Pricing, Packaging, and Product-Led Sales

I restructured monetization from pricing through to conversion mechanics. The goal: maximize customer value across segments while building a self-reinforcing upgrade path.

• Designed a new pricing structure serving both internal app builders and client portal users, eliminating pricing cannibalization

  
• Ran pricing sensitivity research to optimize for average customer value
• Identified and orchestrated conversion triggers from free trial to paid to higher tiers
• Built an internal dashboard to identify PQLs and engage them through automated chats and lifecycle activities
• Implemented PQA trigger flows to detect team usage expansion and layer low-touch sales motions for team and company-wide upgrades
• For higher-tier prospects, mapped target use cases and created demo resources, marketing pages, and written narratives to guide the sales motion

Channel Experimentation

SEO and referrals became the primary acquisition channels, but several other channels delivered meaningful early traction.

• Built and launched an expert partner network — a program for no-code developers and agencies to build complex apps on Jet Admin, which brought in several large clients
• Ran Reddit targeted placements and social listening campaigns
• Executed category and integration injections, capitalizing on existing third-party networks
• Managed paid partnerships with thought leaders in the no-code space

“Mike worked in the trenches with us, bringing a new product to a global market and helping turn Jet Admin into one of the niche leaders”

Anton SvetlovFounder and CEO at Jet Admin

The Results - “Hockey Stick” Growth

After aligning positioning, product, acquisition channels, and monetization, the whole system started to click — driving compounding growth across every metric.

Over the 18-month engagement:

• MRR grew 12× to $2M ARR
• New sign-ups scaled from tens to thousands per month
• Activation rate increased 3.5×, and free trial conversions more than doubled
• SEO pages ranking in the top 3–5 positions, driving high-intent traffic
• Users began escalating through pricing tiers faster, increasing average customer value