How Transformify Grew 10x Without a Marketing Budget — and What SaaS Founders Can Learn

When most SaaS founders imagine rapid growth, they picture big marketing budgets, aggressive ad campaigns, and large sales teams. Lilia Stoyanov, CEO and founder of Transformify, took a very different route — and scaled her global workforce management platform 10x year-over-year without spending a dime on ads.

Her story is both unconventional and packed with lessons for SaaS and tech entrepreneurs.

Solving a Pain That Crosses Borders

Transformify’s origin wasn’t just about spotting a market gap — it was personal. As a digital nomad, Lilia wanted a way for companies to hire, onboard, and pay talent anywhere in the world without the headaches of setting up local entities, managing compliance, or manually handling invoices.

The platform grew from solving her own work-and-travel challenge to addressing bigger social and business needs:

Helping people in regions with limited job access find remote opportunities.
Allowing caregivers, people with disabilities, and professionals facing ageism to work on their own terms.
Offering enterprises a streamlined way to engage global freelancers and employees.

This alignment of personal conviction + market demand became the foundation of her growth story.

Growing Without a Marketing Budget

One of the most surprising parts of Transformify’s journey? They hit double-digit growth — without paid ads, PPC, or boosted social campaigns.

Here’s how:

Free for Years – The platform was offered completely free for the first three years to drive adoption. This wasn’t guesswork; Lilia budgeted for how long they could sustain this before monetizing.
Referral-First Mindset – Instead of affiliate networks, they created a revenue-sharing referral program for existing happy customers, who referred others in exchange for 20% of revenue over six months.
Content & Community – They ran a blog with contributions from other SaaS companies (mutual backlinks, shared audiences), did industry interviews, and focused heavily on humanizing the brand — with Lilia appearing regularly on podcasts and in articles.

This created an engine where users brought more users, and brand trust grew organically.

Mastering the Freemium-to-Paid Transition

For SaaS founders, freemium is a double-edged sword. The wrong execution can result in a flood of non-paying users and no cash flow.

Transformify made the switch to paid by:

Listening to usage patterns – They identified which features their free users relied on most.
Introducing premium features based on user requests – Once those features were added, the upgrade pitch was easy: “You asked for this — now it’s here, and we’re giving you a better price than competitors.”
Leveraging resistance to change – With data already stored and workflows in place, customers were less likely to leave for another platform.

Ruthless Focus on the Right Customers

One of Lilia’s strongest messages for SaaS founders: Not every customer is worth keeping.

She uses cohort analysis to identify:

Which customer segments deliver the best profit margins and lowest churn.
Which groups drain resources with requests that don’t align with the product’s core value.

If a feature request comes from a small, low-value segment, the answer is often “no.” Trying to please everyone, she warns, will “burn your cash faster than expected.”

Key Takeaways for SaaS & Tech Founders

From Lilia’s story, three growth principles stand out:

Budget for Freemium If you’re going free, know exactly how long you can sustain it before monetizing — and cut that time buffer in half.
Make Customers Your Sales Team A smart referral program can beat ads, especially when it gives partners a reason to champion your product over time.
Focus Beats Frenzy Define your ideal customer early and resist building for everyone. Growth accelerates when you double down on who you serve best.

Transformify’s growth wasn’t powered by flashy campaigns or massive funding rounds. It came from strategic patience, customer-powered growth, and relentless focus — all lessons that SaaS and tech companies can apply today.