Scaling to $8M and 35 people with Imants Zudans

Collin Stewart sat down with Imants Zudans, ex-CEO at Molport. Our guest shared he’s story helping build the company from the ground up to $8M and then stepping down for the company’s best.

Molport didn’t start with a product.

They started with Excel and a problem only lab people care about: chemical reagents.

Here’s how it worked in the beginning: a scientist would send Molport a messy list of reagents they needed for an experiment. Molport would manually source every item, checking suppliers, comparing availability, consolidating orders, and then sending back a clean, ready-to-buy plan. No automation. No platform. Just spreadsheets and relentless follow-through.

It was unscalable on purpose. Because it proved something that actually matters: labs will pay to make procurement less painful.

That “Excel MVP” is what took them to roughly €1M in revenue, with a real team and momentum, before they tried to scale sales the way most founders do.

Manual MVP: sell the service before the platform

If you’re in founder-led sales, the fastest path to bootstrapped product-market fit isn’t a prettier product. It’s a paid result.

Molport’s first “product” was a demand: “Send us everything you need.”

No onboarding. No workflow builder. No integrations. Customers sent their complete reagent list, and Molport manually handled it in Excel, sourcing items, reconciling SKUs, finding alternates, consolidating vendors, and turning chaos into a clean order.

And here’s the part most founders skip:

They charged for it. Early. Because the goal of an MVP isn’t to prove you can build software. It’s to confirm someone will pay for the outcome.

Do this

Sell the outcome, not the UI. What are you saving or producing: time, money, risk, compliance, accuracy?
Make the customer hand you the mess. “Send us everything you need” beats “please fill out this form” when you’re early.
Deliver manually and measure pull. Repeat requests, fast renewals, and customers introducing you internally.

Not that

Build the platform first, “so it looks real.”
Hide behind free pilots that never force a buying decision.
Spend months automating steps you haven’t proven are worth paying for.

Takeaway: Don’t overbuild. Prove willingness to pay for the result, then automate the parts you’re doing repeatedly.

One smart growth engine: long-tail Google Ads

Molport didn’t “do marketing.” They found the simplest possible demand engine: capture existing intent.

In chemicals, intent isn’t a vague keyword like lab supplies. It’s a specific reagent name, catalog number, or compound that someone needs right now. And the chemistry universe is basically infinite: millions of chemical names = millions of high-intent searches.

So instead of bidding on generic, expensive terms, Molport went the other way:

They built ads around ultra-specific long-tail queries.
They convinced Google to let them upload hundreds of thousands of keywords.
They focused on terms with tiny volume but massive intent.

One keyword might only get a handful of searches per month. But the person searching it isn’t “researching.” They’re purchasing. That’s the whole game.

Do this

Map your market’s “SKU-level” language: part numbers, integrations, roles, compliance terms, error messages, niche workflows.
Go narrow on purpose: low volume is fine when every click is a raised hand.
Build a system to scale the long tail: templates, keyword lists, and landing pages that match exact queries.

Not that

Compete on broad keywords you can’t win (and that attract low-intent traffic).
“Brand awareness” campaigns when you’re still proving repeatable demand.
One generic landing page for every search.

Takeaway: You probably have your own long-tail, your industry’s version of “chemical names.” Find it, systemize it, and let the big players fight over the expensive, vague keywords.

When to hire sales: start with key accounts

Molport didn’t hire sales to “go faster.”

They hired because the founder hit the real bottleneck in founder-led sales: too many customers, not enough bandwidth.

By around ~€1M, Imants was overloaded, answering questions, handling renewals, coordinating procurement edge cases, and trying to expand accounts simultaneously. That’s when they made their first sales hire, and it wasn’t an SDR or a quota-carrying “hunter.”

It was a key account manager.

Someone whose job was simple:

Keep customers happy.
Make renewals boring.
And systematically grow what was already working.

It worked so well they hired more of the same profile, because the playbook was clear: protect and expand existing revenue before you invent new ways to chase it.

Do this

Hire when you have pull (inbound demand, repeat purchases, expansion opportunities) and the founder is the constraint.
Make the first hire responsible for retention + expansion, not “new logo at all costs.”
Give them a tight mandate: pipeline hygiene, renewals, upsell motions, and account plans.

Not that

Hiring outbound early to compensate for weak demand.
Adding headcount before you can define what “good” looks like (because you haven’t done it yourself).
Measuring the first rep like an enterprise AE, even though the real win is net revenue retention.

Takeaway: Your first sales hire should protect and grow what you already have. Outbound can wait until you’ve got a repeatable machine worth scaling.

Avoidable mistakes (and quick fixes) before you hire

Molport’s path also highlights the boring stuff that quietly breaks founder-led sales as soon as you add headcount.

Mistake #1: No CRM. Everything lives in the founder’s head

When you’re the only seller, your “system” is memory: who’s renewing, who’s expanding, what’s blocked, what needs a follow-up.

The moment you hire, that turns into:

Dropped balls.
Inconsistent customer experience.
And “I thought you had that” chaos.

Quick fix: pick a CRM and use it like a shared source of truth. Doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be used.

Mistake #2: Processes are undocumented

Founders often mistake speed for clarity. You can move fast when you are in the process. A new hire can’t.

Quick fix: write down the current motion in plain English:

Where leads come from.
How you qualify.
What you pitch.
What you send after calls.
How pricing/approvals work.
How renewals and expansions happen.

If you can’t explain it on one page, you can’t hire someone into it.

Mistake #3: Experienced hires force the wrong playbook

A senior sales hire will bring a playbook. If you’re not careful, they’ll install it, whether it fits or not.

That’s how bootstrapped teams accidentally turn a working inbound + expansion motion into a heavy outbound machine they can’t support.

Quick fix: be explicit about what already works (and what doesn’t):

“Our growth comes from long-tail inbound.”
“Our first win is retention + expansion.”
“We are not building an SDR team right now.”

Takeaway: Before hiring, do three things:

Document your current sales steps.
Put a CRM in place (any CRM).
Define what’s working so new hires can scale it rather than break it.

Conclusion

Molport didn’t win because they raised money or built some magical platform first. They won because they sequenced the basics correctly:

Start with a manual, paid MVP
Sell the outcome. Do the work by hand. Charge for it. Automate only after you see repeat pull.
Find your “long-tail” growth lever
Stop fighting over broad, expensive keywords. Identify the ultra-specific terms your buyers search when they’re ready to buy, and scale that system.
Hire a key account manager before outbound SDRs
When you hit the “overwhelmed founder” ceiling, hire to protect and expand existing customers first. Outbound comes after you’ve stabilized what works.

If you’re at the “overwhelmed founder around $1M” stage and you’re ready to turn the chaos into a team-run motion, talk to us about building your first repeatable outbound motion.

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