Zero outbound, 90% SEO: how to grow without a sales team | Hiren Hasmukh @Teqtivity

In this episode of saas.unbound, Anna Nadeina talks with Hiren Hasmukh, founder and CEO of Teqtivity, an IT asset management platform that grew from a hardware idea into a bootstrapped SaaS business.

Teqtivity helps companies manage laptops, phones, tablets, and other IT equipment. But what makes the company especially interesting is not only the product itself. It is the way the business has been built: no outbound sales, a heavy focus on SEO and referrals, fast customer-driven product development, and a clear decision to stay bootstrapped in a market full of larger, funded competitors.

Hiren’s story is also refreshingly honest. He talks about the pivot that worked, the time spent too long on the original product, the realities of founder-led support, and a security breach that forced the company to mature quickly.

From smart lockers to IT asset management software

Teqtivity did not start as a SaaS company. The original idea was a smart locker system, something similar in spirit to an Amazon locker, but designed for internal company use.

The idea came from a practical problem. Engineers often need mobile phones for testing apps, reproducing bugs, or running server load tests. Usually, that meant going through IT to borrow a device, then returning it later. In practice, devices would get delayed, forgotten, or left sitting on someone’s desk.

The locker was designed to solve that operational friction. Engineers could check out a phone themselves, get reminders when it was time to return it, and drop it back into the locker without needing IT involved every time.

At first glance, the locker looked like the product. But the deeper problem turned out to be something else entirely.

It was not really about pickup and drop-off. It was about visibility:

• Who has which device?
• Where is that asset right now?
• When is it due back?
• How is inventory actually being used?

Those questions were being answered by the software sitting behind the hardware. As the team continued building, more demand started to gather around the software than around the locker itself. Customers wanted additional features, reporting, and workflows. Over time, the software became the main product, and the locker became a secondary add-on.

That shift became the foundation of Teqtivity as it exists today.

Why stay bootstrapped in a crowded market?

Teqtivity has been built without outside funding, and for Hiren that was a deliberate choice.

There were three main reasons behind it:

• Flexibility to pivot when needed
• Freedom to make decisions quickly
• Ability to focus on product quality and customer support instead of investor expectations

From the beginning, the goal was not hypergrowth at all costs. The company was intentionally grown slowly so the team could stay close to customers and build on two foundations: a strong product and strong support.

That slower, more controlled approach worked because the business became profitable. Without needing external capital, Teqtivity could keep operating on its own terms.

Hiren’s perspective is simple: the goal is not to become the biggest company in the category. It is to become the best company for customers.

That distinction matters. In a market where many competitors optimize for scale, Teqtivity appears to be optimizing for responsiveness.

Founder-led support works — until it doesn’t

One of the more striking parts of Teqtivity’s approach is how close Hiren has stayed to customers.

Early on, that was pure necessity. He was deeply involved in implementation, support, and day-to-day questions. As the team grew, his role evolved, but he still remained present in customer Slack channels.

Today, he is not there to function as the frontline support agent. He is there to listen.

That continued presence does a few things:

• It signals that leadership cares
• It gives customers direct access when needed
• It helps the whole team see that customer support matters at every level

For early-stage founders, Hiren’s advice is practical. Founder-led support should continue until the volume becomes too high and a real team can take over. Once dedicated support capacity exists, the founder should step back from handling every ticket personally and shift into a listening role instead.

The point is not to vanish. It is to stop being the bottleneck while still setting the standard.

Customization as a competitive advantage

Many SaaS companies resist customization because it creates complexity. Teqtivity has taken almost the opposite stance.

The team starts with a core product that includes the fundamental capabilities any company would need to manage IT assets. But beyond that, customers can request workflows and changes that better match how their teams actually operate.

This philosophy comes from a basic truth: no two IT departments work exactly the same way. Asset policies, approval flows, reporting needs, and operating habits vary widely from company to company.

Instead of forcing customers to adapt to rigid software, Teqtivity adapts the software to fit the customer.

What makes this model unusual is the speed. According to Hiren, if a customer requests an integration today, the team can often build it within two weeks. That is a far cry from the long feature backlogs common in SaaS.

There is also no extra fee attached to “innovation” or feature access. Hiren is blunt about how this differs from larger competitors, many of whom are locked into a single platform approach and charge more for certain capabilities. Teqtivity’s model is to keep features open and move fast.

That speed and openness become part of the product, not just part of support.

How Teqtivity balances roadmap vision with customer requests

Listening to customers is valuable, but blindly following every request is not a product strategy. Teqtivity handles that tension by splitting responsibilities on the engineering side.

One part of the team focuses on improving the main product proactively. That includes new features, integrations, and ideas the company believes will strengthen the platform overall.

Another part focuses on customer requests.

The interesting part is how those two streams interact. Sometimes a request starts as something specific to one customer, such as a report or workflow tweak, and later proves useful enough to become part of the core product for everyone.

So customer requests are not treated as distractions from the roadmap. They are often inputs into it.

That creates a feedback loop where the company can stay opinionated about the product while still learning directly from the real operational problems customers face.

Growth without outbound: referrals, reputation, and SEO

Teqtivity has no outbound sales motion. No cold calls. No cold email. No prospecting engine layered on top of the business.

Growth comes from two places:

• Word of mouth and customer referrals
• Inbound demand through SEO

The referral engine is rooted in the company’s original philosophy: build a strong product and support it well. Happy customers naturally recommend the tool to peers, especially in IT communities where professionals regularly exchange advice on which systems to use.

This network effect becomes even stronger when customers change jobs. Hiren shared that one customer used Teqtivity at three different companies over the course of their career. That kind of portability is a strong signal that the product is solving something real.

The company does still invest in marketing, but selectively. Its main activities include:

• SEO content
• PR and media placements
• Some Google Ads
• Some LinkedIn activity and ads

Among these, SEO has been the biggest growth driver, especially in recent months.

SEO vs. AI search: what is actually driving traffic?

Despite all the hype around AI search, Teqtivity’s inbound traffic still comes overwhelmingly from traditional organic search.

Hiren estimates that roughly 90% of relevant inbound traffic still arrives through SEO rather than AI-driven discovery.

That does not mean AI search is ignored. The team has started adapting content for it, mainly by thinking more carefully about search intent and query phrasing.

That means creating content around the kinds of questions a buyer might ask in an AI tool, such as:

• What are the best IT asset management tools?
• How do you manage company devices across teams?
• What should an IT asset management workflow include?

The focus is on topic selection, structure, headlines, and titles that align with how people phrase questions when using AI assistants.

Even so, the results so far suggest that AI-driven traffic is still a smaller slice than expected. For now, classic SEO remains the dominant channel.

What happens when a security breach hits a small SaaS company

One of the most important lessons in Hiren’s story came from a painful mistake.

About four years ago, Teqtivity experienced a breach when a threat actor accessed one of the company’s backup servers. Data was taken and leaked.

The incident changed how the company thinks about security, and Hiren’s warning to other founders is clear: being small does not make a company invisible.

In many cases, it may make it more attractive.

Smaller businesses often have fewer safeguards, fewer formal processes, and more overlooked vulnerabilities. Attackers look for openings wherever they can find them.

Hiren’s advice is to invest in security early and treat it as foundational, not optional. The first steps include:

• Creating an information security plan
• Reviewing servers, endpoints, and internal systems
• Putting the right tools and processes in place
• Training employees on security practices

After the breach, Teqtivity worked with a forensics team to validate the environment and document what had been fixed. The company used those reports to communicate with existing customers and prospects. It also strengthened trust by becoming SOC 2 Type 2 audited annually.

Even now, some prospects still ask about the incident. That is a reminder that trust can be rebuilt, but it takes time, transparency, and real operational change.

Remote culture in a 25-person, engineering-heavy team

Teqtivity is a team of 25, with around 20 engineers. The company is fully remote, but it has found practical ways to avoid the isolation and drift that often come with distributed work.

One important detail is that the engineering team is based in India and located in the same city. Although they work remotely most of the month, they spend one week together each month in a shared office setup.

That regular in-person time helps strengthen relationships while preserving the flexibility of remote work.

Beyond that, the culture rests on a few simple principles:

• Trust people to do their jobs
• Avoid micromanagement
• Maintain clear communication
• Stay alert to signs of boredom, burnout, or recurring issues
• Give people freedom to work in a way that fits their personality

Hiren describes success less through formal systems and more through day-to-day awareness. Managers are in regular contact with team members, and issues are surfaced quickly when something feels off. There has been at least one survey, but the main operating model relies on trust, availability, and steady communication.

The goal is straightforward: people should feel good when they start the day and when they end it.

How a bootstrapped team makes bets without wasting money

Bootstrapping changes how experiments are run. There is less room for large, expensive swings, so Teqtivity uses a small-bet approach.

This has been especially relevant in marketing and sales initiatives, from events to sponsorships to attempts at trying new channels.

The process looks like this:

1. Set a clear goal
2. Define the intention behind the experiment
3. Place a small bet
4. Learn quickly
5. Change direction early if it is not working

Rather than forcing an initiative to succeed after heavy investment, the team tries to get fast feedback and preserve flexibility.

That approach fits neatly with the broader company philosophy: stay close to reality, move quickly, and avoid unnecessary complexity.

Biggest wins, biggest failures

For Hiren, the biggest win was the pivot itself. Moving from the original locker concept to a software-first business created a product customers genuinely advocate for. That advocacy is the clearest sign that the company is building something useful.

Another major win came early with an enterprise customer. Teqtivity built a couple of reports tied to mobile phone usage and helped that customer save just over $900,000. It was a strong example of the platform’s value extending beyond inventory visibility into cost control and operational efficiency.

On the failure side, two things stand out.

The first is the security breach, which exposed weak points and forced the company to improve. The second is spending too long pushing the locker product before pivoting. Looking back, Hiren believes the company likely invested too much time and money in that direction before recognizing where the real value was.

That is a familiar founder lesson: sometimes the best move is not building harder, but changing course sooner.

A practical founder hack: stay close to deployments

When asked for one practical piece of advice, Hiren’s answer was highly specific: stay close to deployments and implementations in the early stages.

That is where the clearest feedback tends to appear:

• How customers actually use the product
• Where support friction shows up
• Which features matter in practice
• What needs to improve before the company scales further

It is easy to get distracted by shiny additions or cosmetic improvements. But in technical products especially, customers often care far more about reliability and usefulness than polish for its own sake.

That may be one of the clearest themes running through Teqtivity’s journey: make it work well, make it useful, and stay close enough to reality to know the difference.