From zero to one. Then a pivot that made system integrators the sales channel.

Quills.ai is a no-code GenAI platform. Business users such as pricing analysts and procurement teams connect it to their data sources and ask questions in plain language, instead of waiting for a technical team to write queries.

The company is bootstrapped. It is currently part of an Antler cohort.

A new category with no budget to explain it

Buyers did not yet have a line item for natural-language data tools. A bootstrapped company could not buy awareness, so every channel had to earn attention.

Direct outreach produced some responses, not a business

Targeted outreach got replies, but selling one company at a time was too slow for a small team to reach scale.

Each client needed setup and data connections

Getting value from Quills means connecting it to a client's data. A small team cannot do that for every customer directly.

Absolute lead generation and marketing from day one

We treated the first phase as pure demand creation: positioning, target lists and a steady marketing calendar.

• Positioning for business users, not data engineers
• Target lists by role and data stack

Run multiple webinars

Webinars showed the product working on real questions and gave outreach a useful reason to start a conversation.

• Live demonstrations of plain-language data queries
• Recordings reused in follow-up

Send very targeted outreach

Outreach went to narrow segments of data and business leaders, and we tracked who replied and why.

• Small, specific segments
• Response analysis by segment

Pivot to system integrators

The responses showed that direct selling would be slow. We repositioned Quills as a tool system integrators cross-sell to their existing clients.

• SI-focused positioning and outreach
• Quills deployed inside SI client engagements

Price per client instance

The commercial model charges per instance. Five SIs with three clients each means fifteen client instances, so revenue grows with the partners' client base.

• Pricing that rewards partners for each client added
• A clear model for the 1 to 10 stage

Funnel build

Quills started without a funnel. We built positioning, target lists and a webinar programme from nothing.

Top of funnel

Webinars and content showing plain-language questions answered on real data.

Middle of funnel

Very targeted outreach and follow-up to engaged segments.

Bottom of funnel

System integrator partnerships that deploy Quills per client instance.

The biggest result was a go-to-market model that fits a bootstrapped company.

• Quills.ai taken from zero to one.
• A repositioning from direct sales to a system integrator cross-sell model.
• Per-instance pricing that scales with each partner's client base.
• Now working on the 1 to 10 stage, with Quills in an Antler cohort.

A low response rate is information about the channel

When targeted outreach gets some replies but not enough, the message may be fine and the route to market wrong. Look at who replied before rewriting the copy.

Price for the channel you want

Per-instance pricing gives system integrators a reason to add every client. The commercial model is part of the go-to-market, not an afterthought.

Bootstrapped companies need multipliers, not volume

A partner who already has the client relationships multiplies a small team. One SI with several clients is worth more than several direct prospects.