CommunityMarketplace

Roll To

Mobile bar marketplace that cracked distribution by sliding into Instagram DMs.

MRR
$1K
Gross Margin
60%
Time to 1,000 Customers
weeks
Primary Channel
Community

The storyHow they got there

Josh Smith launched Roll To in May 2022 as a non-technical founder — an "Airbnb for mobile bars" connecting event organizers with cocktail trucks, coffee carts, and ice-cream vans. He built the initial directory in Webflow without writing a line of code.

The cold-start supply side was solved through Instagram. Mobile bar owners are a community that lives on visual social media. Josh DMed dozens of mobile bar operators directly on Instagram. Cold email to the same operators failed completely. Instagram DMs converted.

Programmatic SEO via Webflow CMS — city and state landing pages for every major metro — built organic discoverability. A pivot from a directory model to a commission-based marketplace via Sharetribe opened a path to much higher revenue per booking.

Channel MixWhere the growth actually came from

Most case studies hand-wave channels. Here's the rough allocation — not in dollars spent, but in users acquired — across the routes that actually mattered.

Community
55%
Discord, Reddit, Twitter — building in public and earning trust.
Content
30%
Blog posts and tutorials that attract the right audience.
Word of mouth
15%
Community members referring friends and colleagues.

TimelineWhat happened, when

May 2022
Launched as Webflow directory
Non-technical founder. First ~20 listings manually seeded.
Mid 2022
Instagram DM outreach works
Cold email fails. Instagram DMs convert mobile bar owners.
Late 2022
Programmatic SEO launched
City/state landing pages. Organic traffic grows.
Mar 2023
Pivoted to commission marketplace
Rebuilt on Sharetribe. ~$150 avg commission per booking.

StackTools they used

Webflow CMSSharetribeInstagramStripe

In their own wordsThe quote

"Cold emails absolutely did not work. Instagram DMs were where the mobile bar community hangs out — once I found a great outreach channel, I doubled down on it."
Roll To founder
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