@timothy_bramlett Notifier Helped Them Start. They Just Raised $105M
♬ original sound – Timothy Bramlett
One of the most exciting success stories in the Notifier community comes from Daryna Kulya and her company OpenPhone, which recently raised $105 million in growth financing and rebranded as Quo. What makes this story particularly compelling is how Notifier played a direct role in their early growth journey and continues to be a key tool in their marketing strategy today.
A Proven Growth Strategy Built on Reddit
Daryna openly shares that when she and her co-founder Mahyar started OpenPhone in 2018, Reddit became one of their key channels for customer acquisition. In her comprehensive article “How I used Reddit to get our first 1,000 customers,” she details the exact tactics and tools they used to build their customer base from the ground up with a marketing budget of zero dollars.
Notifier was instrumental in their strategy. Daryna used Notifier to set up alerts for relevant industry and competitor terms on Reddit, which allowed her to naturally join conversations that other people had initiated on topics relevant to OpenPhone. This approach transformed social listening from a manual, time-consuming task into an automated system that delivered opportunities directly to her inbox.
Why Reddit Was the Perfect Channel
Reddit offered OpenPhone several advantages as an early marketing channel. The platform is where innovators and early adopters hang out, making it ideal for reaching people willing to take a chance on an early-stage product rather than only wanting to work with market leaders. Additionally, since Reddit is largely anonymous, it levels the playing field for startups. Success on the platform is about what you have to say, not about who you are or how established your company is.
The timing was also strategic. Daryna had already seen success growing their early user base through Facebook groups, and posting on Reddit was completely free, which aligned perfectly with their $0 marketing budget.
The Power of Social Listening with Notifier
Rather than creating new posts constantly, Daryna uses Notifier to monitor Reddit for existing conversations that might be relevant to OpenPhone and comments where it makes sense. Her setup is straightforward but effective. She primarily monitors OpenPhone brand mentions and competitor terms, receiving email notifications throughout the day whenever threads match her keywords of interest.
This approach allows her to stay close to the market, understand the customer experience and buying process from an unbiased point of view, and offer help to anyone who might need it. Sometimes the engagement is as simple as thanking customers who mention OpenPhone positively in discussions.
The tool removes the friction from social listening. Instead of manually searching Reddit multiple times per day or missing important conversations entirely, Notifier delivers relevant discussions directly to her inbox, ensuring she can engage at the right moment.
Beyond Acquisition: Building Community and Gathering Insights
Six years later, with over 100,000 customers, Daryna still uses Reddit and Notifier actively. The strategy has evolved from pure customer acquisition to encompass brand building, customer support, and market research.
The OpenPhone subreddit, which Daryna created in 2019, has grown organically alongside their customer base and transformed into a true community where customers help each other. This community provides unfiltered product feedback and serves as one of the fastest ways to understand what customers really want.
Lessons for Growing Companies
The OpenPhone story demonstrates that strategic social media monitoring is not just theory. It is a real-world, proven approach for early-stage companies to find and connect with their ideal customers. By being present at the exact moment when potential customers are expressing needs that your product can address, you can build relationships and trust authentically, without relying solely on traditional marketing channels or paid advertising.
Daryna’s key advice is simple but powerful: create more value than you capture. Whether through sharing stories, valuable data, or unique insights, the focus should be on genuinely helping the community rather than purely promotional content.
The success of OpenPhone validates the power of combining authentic community engagement with smart automation tools like Notifier. Their journey from startup to a company that raised $105 million in growth financing shows that the strategies used in the early days can build a solid foundation for long-term growth.