Day 6: + $60K in ARR. got invited to private dinner with VCs

Dec 4, 2025

Day 6: + $60K in ARR. got invited to private dinner with VCs

why existing clients betting bigger matters more than new logos

Day 6 of the $1M ARR sprint.

Added $60K in ARR today. From existing clients who trust us enough to bet bigger.

Common point between them? They prep for serie A fundings.

Both want to prove to investors they can master additional GTM channels beyond what we’ve been running (LinkedIn GTM: content, outreach, ads).

I’ve been cooking these deals for 6 months now.

They both mentioned an early interest for GEO (aka the new trendy topic, aka how to rank through LLMs, aka how to make chatGPT talk about your product) and i decided to allocate 30% of my time to nerd the topic.

As we’ve been quietly building this capability for months. Testing. Optimizing. Proving it works at small scale. It was about time to sign the deals.

Now they’re ready to go all-in:

$60K added to ARR from upsells
Higher LTV unlocked (clients centralizing all GTM work with one partner)
Trust validated by clients choosing us for investor-facing expansion

This is the model I’ve been building toward. Clients don’t want five agencies or 3 mid full time employees.

They need one reliant partner who can own a substantial part of the stack and actually deliver.

For anything GTM it’s gonna be Earleads.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

One of these expansions came from a client a VC introduced us to 90 days ago. We over-delivered. Showed the VC our work.

They were impressed enough to loop in their general partner.

“This is how B2B GTM should be done.”

I followed up yesterday evening to tell them about the possible expansion. They re-book a call with me to see how this could benefit other founders in their portfolios anddddd…

They’re inviting me to a private dinner (in 2 weeks) hosted by them and 2 other funds (top 10 biggest ones in Europe).

Honestly? I am super excited. Yet fighting the urge to celebrate. I gotta stay focus. This is just noise. Only 2 things matters:

1- Revenue growth
2- Client satisfaction

But i do take this invite as a clear signal. We proved the model with their startup and they want their other portfolio companies to see what’s possible.

This is the referral engine I’ve been building.

One happy founder → their investor → 30+ portfolio companies.

The math is stupid simple. Ten strong VC relationships could build a $10M ARR company.

I’ve been saying this for months. Today it started compounding.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I received a message today I didn’t expect: “Othmane, you’ve been saying this for two years. It’s crazy to see these AI-first companies shifting back to your thesis now.”

For context, 2 years ago I wrote a thesis explaining why hyper-automation and “AI replaces sales” positioning was fundamentally wrong.

Why you need the human layer. Why co-pilot beats autopilot.

I quit my chief of staff role to build this model.

What’s happening now is the companies that bet everything on full automation are pivoting back to pragmatic, human-supported GTM.

The exact positioning I’ve been running since day one. Feels good to be early and right.

(i won’t get cocky though…)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Yesterday I lost $25K. Today I added $60K.

Net positive, but the lesson is clear: momentum swings fast.

If you let wins go to your head and losses go to your heart, you’re done.

So yeah, I’m happy. But I’m also staying stoic. This sprint will have bigger swings than this. The only way through is disciplined focus and emotional detachment from daily noise.

High highs. Low lows. That’s the game.

The next two weeks are critical. If we can stack a few more of these upsell conversions and close two of the five prospects from this week’s calls, we’re ahead of pace.

Dinner with VCs next week.

Pipeline building. Systems holding. Team executing.

This is what scale looks like when you build it right.

ARR: $582K → Target: $1M | Days remaining: 54

See you tomorrow 👊