From $0 to $60M: How Motion Became an Essential Tool for SMBs

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.

Today Motion raised $60M at a $550M valuation. But the story starts on Christmas Eve, 2019. That night, I got a call from Michael Seibel (ex-CEO of Y Combinator). He was blunt. “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” And he was right. We’d pivoted 20 times.  We were half-in, half-out. I even had a backup plan — return to my 7-figure trading job. That night, I realized: You don’t build a startup with a safety net. You either commit. Or you quit. So I went all in. We built product after product.  And watched them all fail. 16 hours a day. 7 days a week. So I hacked together a tool to help me focus. That tool became Motion. The first version barely grew. For 2 years, we sat near $0 ARR. Then in Sept. 2021 everything changed. We launched auto-scheduling tasks. Signups quadrupled overnight. Conversion doubled. Revenue exploded. $1M ARR in a month. Then $10M+. We had product-market fit. But Michael delivered another hard truth. This time, in an office hour. “Congrats on $10M ARR. But you’re building nice-to-haves. You’ll never hit $1B ARR this way.” And again, he was right. Motion was useful, not essential. So we went back to the customers. We found a segment of power users. SMB owners and managers — everyday American businesses. They were clear: 1. They were drowning in busywork 2. They want AI 3. They can’t implement it. Why? No time. No budget. No engineers. Fortune 500s spend millions on AI. Providers send armies of forward-deployed engineers to their offices. But SMBs are left behind. So we built a new version of Motion: The first agentic work suite for SMBs. Think Microsoft suite — if it were built today with AI. Not just software for work.  Software that does the work too. AI employees working alongside humans: - AI marketers - AI sales reps - AI project managers Doing the busywork. So humans can do meaningful work. And yes — autoscheduling is still there. Now as a skill set within an AI employee. The numbers make it clear. SMBs want this: - 10,000+ SMBs now run on Motion - 8-figure B2B ARR. - Growing 3x YoY. 20% MoM - Near 100% dollar retention - AI Employees went from $0 to 8-figure ARR in 3 months Today, we’re announcing $60M to keep building the agentic work suite SMBs deserve. Full announcement on TechCrunch and Motion Blog — links in comments.