I spent nine years as CTO of a Romanian direct response company that grew to $80M a year in sales. I architected most of the internal stack: funnel system, custom checkout with multi-MID routing, attribution, CRM, call center integration.
We ran 5 to 7 tools doing what one platform should have done. Sales that did not reach the CRM. Recovery calls that did not fire. Postbacks that broke when URLs changed. Every quarter I watched revenue leak between tools.
I tried to buy the answer. ClickFunnels was too shallow on commerce. Konnektive too narrow on pages. GoHighLevel was built for agencies, not brand owners. Hyros and Triple Whale were attribution only. Nothing existed for the operator running real direct response revenue.
So I left in 2023 and started building it. Two years full-time, solo, 60 to 80 hours a week. Today twelve performance marketers run their funnels on ElasticFunnels with about $3.5K a month in revenue, roughly two times what it was six months ago. Anchor brand alone runs $4M a month in net GMV through the platform. One hundred percent word of mouth, zero paid acquisition.
What I learned along the way:
- The wedge is not a tool. The wedge is the integration. A better page builder does not save the operator. A better checkout does not save the operator. The wins live in the spaces between tools, where revenue used to leak.
- Performance marketers do not pay for features. They pay for revenue capture. Every tool that sits in the path is judged on dollars saved, not boxes ticked.
- Same-URL split testing only matters because of the ad platform. A new URL means new ad review and broken learning. Variants on the same URL keep Facebook, Google, and TikTok optimizing without resets.
