5 Unconventional Go-to-Market Lessons from Localyze’s Journey to 500 Enterprise Customers

Most B2B SaaS playbooks emphasize product-led growth and inbound marketing. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Localyze CEO Hanna Marie Asmussen revealed how her company reached 500 customers and 98% retention through a completely different approach. Here are the key go-to-market lessons from their journey:

1. Pure Outbound Can Scale (If You’re Willing to Break Convention) While most SaaS companies invest heavily in content marketing and inbound leads, Localyze took the opposite approach. “95% of our revenue is a complete outbound,” Hanna reveals. This unconventional strategy created interesting challenges when scaling their sales team: “When we started hiring SDRs, then we actually realized, like, hey, there’s some SDRs that are accustomed to only doing inbound. They get leads and then they qualify them. But for us, it was different.”
2. Don’t Compete on Price in Enterprise Markets Instead of trying to undercut traditional immigration law firms, Localyze focused on experience and efficiency. They’re now evolving their pricing strategy to drive more predictable revenue, with Hanna noting they’re “doing a shift in terms of business model and pricing to get a higher share of upfront commitment and basically more recurring revenue by selling flat fees.” The result? “More than a quarter of our customers on a fully recurring model.”
3. Mission Alignment Beats Market Timing When COVID-19 hit and borders closed worldwide, many expected Localyze to fail. Instead, they thrived. Hanna attributes this resilience to deep mission alignment: “We really believed in what we do and really knew that the market would come back, which it did, ultimately.” She emphasizes that “founders that just found something for the sake of founding have a harder time, especially when shit hits the fan.”
4. Let Market Conditions Guide Your Vertical Expansion While Localyze started with “99% tech workers,” they’ve successfully expanded into consulting, financial services, and manufacturing. This wasn’t part of a predetermined strategy but rather an adaptive response to market conditions. As Hanna explains, “Because tech is a bit more impacted, it has accelerated our transition into a more traditional customer segment.”
5. Speed to Market Matters More Than Perfect Product Looking back, Hanna identifies their biggest early mistake: excessive focus on product development before market entry. “When we got into Y Combinator, people just started selling without having any kind of product, and we really tried to build something first to figure that out. And, yeah, that really cost us a lot of time.” This insight challenges the common perfectionist tendency among technical founders.

The Power of Flexible Expansion Strategy Rather than following a rigid playbook, Localyze adopted what Hanna calls “four different expansion dimensions”: geographical expansion, moving upmarket, industry diversification, and product expansion. “It’s always like thinking about where do we see potential, but also what is our customer base requesting, where do we see traction?” This flexible approach allowed them to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, particularly during COVID and subsequent economic shifts.

For B2B founders, Localyze’s journey offers a compelling alternative to conventional wisdom. Their success demonstrates that with strong mission alignment and adaptability, successful B2B companies can be built through pure outbound sales, even in complex regulatory markets. It’s a reminder that while best practices exist for a reason, the path to success doesn’t always follow the established playbook.

Most importantly, their story shows that success often comes not from following a predetermined plan, but from staying flexible and responsive to market conditions while maintaining unwavering focus on the core mission. As Hanna puts it, their goal remains ambitious: “To bring 100 million people across borders by 2030.”