How Tally Turns Community Conversations Into Compounding Growth
Learn how the bootstrapped form builder Tally used community conversations as a core ingredient to reach $4M in ARR.
Company info (October 2025):
- Size: 4 employees, $4M ARR
- Funding: Bootstrapped
- Headquarters: Ghent, Belgium
Tally is one of the most loved form builders on the internet.
The tiny team behind Tally has reached $4M ARR fully bootstrapped by making form building simple, fun, and community-driven. Their growth wasn’t fueled by ads or sales but by genuine conversations on Reddit, Indie Hackers, X, and LinkedIn.
Even as their community has scaled from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of users, one thing has never changed: to keep growing on their terms Tally keeps listening to their users.
For this customer story, we spoke with Marie Martens, Co-Founder of Tally, who together with her marketing manager uses Octolens daily to stay close to their users.
“Talking to users is the one thing that always matters. As the volume grew, we just couldn’t do it manually anymore - Octolens helps make it a structured process.”
- Marie Martens, Co-Founder, Tally
When Marie and her co-founder Filip started Tally they were focused on one thing: learning fast.
“We joined YC Startup School early on,” Marie recalled. “They tracked two metrics every week: How many users did you talk to? and What did you learn from them? That stuck with us. Especially as a bootstrapped team of two for three years - it helped us prioritize what matters.”
That discipline of direct feedback became Tally’s north star. They shipped an MVP quickly, shared it across founder communities, and kept iterating based on real user input.
“It’s in the DNA of how we build Tally. The most genuine marketing you can do is just showing up where someone needs help and joining the conversation.”
Early on, Marie spent hours each week combing through Reddit, Indie Hackers, and X threads jumping in to help when people discussed form builders or user onboarding flows. “We didn’t think of it as marketing,” she said. “It was just the most natural way to grow.”
As Tally’s community grew, so did the noise. People were recommending the product everywhere - from private Slack groups to LinkedIn posts and Hacker News threads.
But the team quickly realized a few problems:
Not everyone tags your brand. Users shared Tally forms daily without tagging the company, meaning valuable insights and reach were being missed.
“Tally” is a common word. Searches surfaced irrelevant results.
Manual checks couldn’t scale. Marie had relied on a simple Slack integration from an indie tool to track Reddit and Indie Hackers, but as volume grew, they needed a more structured system.
“We were getting generic alerts without context. It told us someone mentioned Tally, but not what they said, where, or the sentiment.”
As Tally expanded to LinkedIn and beyond, the gap widened. The team needed a way to centralize every relevant mention without drowning in noise.
That’s when they discovered Octolens.
“I think I first saw Octolens mentioned on LinkedIn,” Marie said. “I liked the UI, and it felt approachable”
Tally set up tracking for their brand name, core category terms, and competitor terms.
The biggest win wasn’t just seeing mentions - it was how they handled them. Tally routes every Octolens mention directly into Missive, their shared inbox. From there, Marie and her social media manager, Emily, triage each mention as if it were a support ticket.
“We treat mentions like support. Octolens pipes them into Missive, we assign owners, and we clear the inbox every day.”
Here’s how their workflow works:
- Route to Inbox. Octolens sends each mention to Missive via email.
- Assign and comment. Team members can claim or discuss each mention internally.
- Engage directly. Jump into Reddit, X, or LinkedIn threads to reply, clarify, or celebrate wins.
- Spot trends and opportunities. Identify creators, community advocates, or companies using Tally.
- Close the loop. Use insights for content, community stories, and product messaging.
By the end of each day, the goal is simple: Inbox zero. Every mention is seen, processed, and if needed acted on.
“Every mention is a task. And by the end of the day, everything’s handled.” Marie said.
Since implementing Octolens, Tally has surfaced several valuable surprises:
OpenAI using Tally. “We discovered that one through Octolens. It wasn’t tagged or announced anywhere, we just spotted it through a post.”
Creator & community stories. Many of the “Community Stories” featured on Tally’s blog solopreneurs, agencies, and small SaaS founders were discovered through Octolens alerts.
“We’re constantly discovering new clients and use cases we weren’t aware of. Octolens helps us catch those quickly and turn them into stories. It’s motivating internally too, seeing real people use Tally in creative ways, it’s the best feedback loop you can have.”
Marie estimates that Octolens saves her team at least an hour a day compared to manual searching and triage.
But more importantly, it ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
Inbox Zero: Every single mention gets reviewed daily.
Faster engagement: The team can respond to community threads within minutes, keeping Tally present in conversations that drive awareness.
Higher discovery: Untagged mentions reveal “silent fans” and brand advocates who were previously invisible.
Messaging insight: By analyzing real language used around Tally, what users love, what they wish for, the team now feeds those insights into product messaging.
“It’s not about replying to everything. It’s about showing up in the right conversations and doing it genuinely. Octolens helps us do that at scale.”
The team now handles mentions as naturally as support tickets making social listening part of everyday operations rather than an afterthought.
Tally’s story exemplifies what makes founder-led companies so powerful. Their entire growth model is built on proximity to users being where their community is and responding quickly.
“Our roadmap is basically shaped by our users,” Marie said. “That’s why we haven’t had to backtrack on features or messaging. We know what to build because we’re always listening.”
By combining Octolens data with customer feedback and support insights, Marie’s team understands what users truly value.
That feedback even influenced the upcoming redesign of Tally’s homepage. “I’ve been looking at what people say online what words they use to describe us, what they love most. That, combined with support data, gives us a clear direction.”
Find Tally users faster across LinkedIn, Reddit, and Indie Hackers.
Save ~1 hour/day through automated triage and inbox-based workflow.
Scale authenticity: focus on genuine interactions in the right threads, not every thread.
Turn mentions into assets: community stories, messaging insights, and creator relationships.
Keep sentiment visible: positive, neutral, and constructive feedback all feed into strategy.
Octolens monitors your brand in real time. Receive AI-vetted alerts for keyword mentions and growth opportunities so you can act fast and stay ahead of your competition. Start for free or book a demo to see how Octolens can help you stay on top of the conversations that matter.