Jotform Growth Story - Evren Bayraktar - VP of Growth

Summary of the Conversation (Key Points):

Background & Role:

Evren Bayraktar is the VP of Growth at JotForm.

He joined when JotForm was a small team of about 15–20 people and has been there for around 10 years.

Company Growth & Scale:

JotForm has grown from a small team to over 500 employees and 25+ million total users worldwide.

The company is bootstrapped, which influences both spending and growth strategies.

Core Product & Expansion:

Primary Product: An easy-to-use Form Builder (no-code) to collect data and automate workflows.

Additional Products:

JotForm Sign (digital signatures),

JotForm Apps (no-code app builder/PWA creator),

Approvals/Workflow features,

PDF form conversion, and more.

New features often arise from listening to user needs and expanding functionality accordingly.

SEO Philosophy & Traffic:

SEO is the top channel for user acquisition, but the strategy focuses on user-first content rather than technical “tricks.”

Template library (thousands of form templates) is a major source of organic traffic.

They emphasize site performance (speed, reliability) to improve both user experience and search rankings.

Paid Advertising & Other Channels:

Google Ads (particularly Search) is their largest paid channel.

They continually experiment (e.g., Dynamic Search Ads) and optimize campaigns based on performance data.

Referrals and word-of-mouth also drive significant user sign-ups.

A/B Testing & Growth Mindset:

They frequently run A/B tests on landing pages, in-product features, and promotional offers.

Custom-built growth tools track tests and measure results.

Emphasis on long-term impact: a successful short-term test might have negative consequences over time, so they review test outcomes months later.

AI Integration:

JotForm has leveraged machine learning internally for years (e.g., spam/phishing detection, form field suggestions).

The new AI Agent is in development/beta, aiming to facilitate:

Conversational form completion (users chat with an AI assistant while filling forms).

Dynamic question prompting and context-based help for respondents.

They plan to publicly expand this feature and have opened it to some beta users in Turkey.

User-Centric Approach & Differentiation:

Being bootstrapped means they spend money carefully, but they focus on high-quality user experience to drive loyalty.

They see trust (security, data privacy) as a key differentiator compared to potential clones or similar newcomers.

Promotional Campaigns (e.g., Black Friday):

JotForm runs annual campaigns with varied discount structures (e.g., 50% off vs. 60% off vs. “50% + extra 20%”).

They do A/B tests on discount levels, timing, and urgency (e.g., extra discount in the first 3 hours).

They monitor both short-term sales and the potential long-term effects on overall revenue.

Team Culture & Collaboration:

Open, collaborative environment: ideas from all levels undergo testing and iteration.

Founder Aytekin Tank and the leadership team regularly review data, hold “hack weeks,” and push for innovation and experimentation.

Overall, JotForm’s rapid growth stems from user-driven product development, continuous experimentation, strong SEO presence, and a focused growth mindset that leverages both small and large initiatives—while carefully monitoring their long-term business impacts.

Video Transcript

Evren Bayraktar:

If you’re successful, your clones will appear. They’re very successful. But there’s nothing like “We shouldn’t do that.” No offense, but…

Emre Elbeyoglu:

You’re not an agency SEO person. I’m not taking my girls. I’m talking to Aytekin Abi, and he’s looking at Canva, checking out different big companies, you know.

Evren Bayraktar:

I always buy the 50-lira deals. Sometimes I also wonder, “How do we even do this?”

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Hello, welcome. I have with me today Mr. Evren Bayraktar, who serves as VP of Growth at JotForm. Today, we’ll get to know him more closely and talk about what activities are carried out at JotForm. Welcome, Evren.

Evren Bayraktar:

Thank you, Emre. Hello.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

How are you, man? Everything good?

Evren Bayraktar:

I’m good, thanks a lot. How about you?

Emre Elbeyoglu:

I’m good too, apart from the technical problems we experienced. Please bear with us for being my first guest. Now, we’re actually curious about what you do at JotForm as a team in an organization of about 500 people. But first, can you tell us about what you did before JotForm, Evren Bayraktar? What were your fields of interest, your areas of expertise? Then we can talk about JotForm and the great things you do there.

Evren Bayraktar:

Sure. I’m from Ankara; I spent my life here. I was really curious about computers and the web. I made my first website at age 9.

Back in those days, we had Dreamweaver and FrontPage, stuff like that. That’s basically how I got started with servers.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

So were you one of those people using free domains, like some .tk, .co something?

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, definitely. Back then, we had Yönlendir.com…

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Exactly.

Evren Bayraktar:

…Maynet. Also, Beriltech was around, owned by Devrim Demirel. Over the years, I had the chance to cross paths with Devrim Abi. In fact, my first professional job was with him at Beriltech. Then, over time, I moved to JotForm around 2015. It’s been about nine or ten years at JotForm.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

So you’ve really climbed the ranks. How many people were there when you started?

Evren Bayraktar:

I think around 15–20 people when I started, around 2015.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

So JotForm has grown quite a bit.

Evren Bayraktar:

I was there throughout that growth journey.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

And now you’re VP of Growth, correct?

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, I ended up heading up growth in the end.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Great, man. JotForm is one of the Turkish tech companies I find most successful. Some companies are strong in narrow domains, generating revenue and scaling a team, but JotForm is both bootstrapped and gains hundreds of thousands of new customers each month. It’s product-led growth, and I’m really impressed. It’s such a scalable expansion. Some companies hit a thousand paying customers and become a unicorn. But how many customers does JotForm have at the moment?

Evren Bayraktar:

Right now, we have over 25 million total users. I won’t give a precise number for paying users, but it’s quite substantial.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Sure, you have a good paying user base.

Evren Bayraktar:

Exactly.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Awesome. That’s why JotForm has always been special to me. The form market is quite competitive, yet you’ve achieved such growth with relatively modest revenue per customer. That’s impressive. You don’t charge very high amounts per user. Actually, your basic plans start around 30 USD a month. I guess your average revenue might be about 100 USD per customer?

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Or maybe even lower.

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, right around that figure per user.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

So reaching today’s volume is huge, and you must face churn. That demands significant operational growth. You must deal with churn, right?

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, there is churn, of course, but we have users who have been with JotForm since 2006 or 2007. JotForm’s growth story is built around listening to users and adding features accordingly, so they really like us. They’re like, “Oh, you added this feature, that’s great, it’s really useful.” We develop JotForm based on user needs, so we do have some churn from dissatisfied users, but it’s never been a huge issue for us.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Great. It’s really valuable to have you as a guest here because you have a decade of experience. Who knows how many tactics you’ve tried, which ones worked, which ones failed. But obviously most have worked because you’ve achieved this growth as a team. I believe you now have a team of 80 or 90?

Evren Bayraktar:

We’re around 90 now.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Right. So I’m curious: in terms of acquiring traffic or signups, what was your main channel? The product can sell itself to a certain degree, but how do you bring that initial signup, that first exposure to JotForm? I’m sure your team is responsible for that. What do you do at the moment? Could you share any specific channels or strategies that worked out for you? That would be really helpful for our viewers, because many people look at JotForm and say “wow.” I talk to Aytekin, and he looks at Canva or other big companies. Even though you’re huge in Turkey, your vision is likely to grow even further. So, if you could talk about your journey, that would be great.

Evren Bayraktar:

Honestly, at JotForm, we rarely look backward. We usually think, “What can we do going forward?” Even every day when I arrive at work, I ask, “What can we do today?” We run a lot of tests. As you mentioned, we’ve tried many things. At one point, we had over a hundred active A/B tests running across landing pages, inside the product, on advertising. We do a lot of A/B testing on JotForm. We learned all this as we went. We have no standard third-party A/B test tool; we built our own. We have a growth tools team that handles it. For me, the most important takeaway from my time at JotForm is how we learned everything on the go.

As for top acquisition channels, if I had to name the top three, I’d say SEO, paid advertising, and referrals.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Makes sense. I follow SEO closely because it’s my area of expertise. I’ve been seeing steady growth, and you seem to be minimally affected by updates. How is that team organized? I want concrete insights for people. Because so many folks see you continuing to climb in SEO, while many companies have had crisis moments with Google updates. In your case, you remained stable. Could you talk about strategies? Maybe the template side, which I know is a major traffic driver with thousands of templates. Is there anything else in SEO that’s a “secret sauce” for you?

Evren Bayraktar:

I got very involved in web early on. I was somewhat against the concept of “SEO,” or maybe I still am. Let me clarify: you have to do something for the user. We were always focusing on that. At least I was. There are some SEO tactics out there—Black Hat, building random links, etc. We’ve never done those at JotForm. In fact, we get suggestions from SEO consultants, and sometimes there’s friction. I often joke internally—no offense, but we’re not “agency SEO folks.”

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Yes, exactly. I used to run an agency, so as an agency SEO guy, I understand. I’m not offended.

Evren Bayraktar:

We make jokes about it, but it’s true. Take the templates, for instance. They bring in a lot of traffic. Essentially, it’s about providing a pre-set solution for users. People search on Google to solve a specific need, and they find JotForm. So we get a lot of traffic from our templates library.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Totally agree. In general, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but that “optimization” is maybe just 10–20% of the process. Google prioritizes user experience—site speed, meta titles, etc. A lot of SEO folks used to say, “Do this, Google will love it,” but it’s not about blindly chasing Google’s preferences. We don’t fully know the algorithm; we only do reverse engineering. If you simply optimize for Google without focusing on user experience, it’s pointless. Because it’s ultimately about user satisfaction. Indeed, as we know from the latest leaked stuff about Google’s algorithm, they use Chrome data to measure user behavior, dwell time, clicks, etc. So nowadays, SEO basically equals user experience, as you said. JotForm has been built around user needs, so you keep growing.

Evren Bayraktar:

For instance, regarding site speed: I used to obsess over that. Some updates emerged, but I was personally hung up on optimization. If I were Google, I would also prefer a fast site because a slow one slows down my crawl. So we always put a lot of emphasis on speed. In fact, if I recall, my first job title at JotForm was “Performance Engineer.”

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Nice. Speed itself is a topic that can be misunderstood. Many say their site is fast, but it depends on the user’s internet connection, location, etc. Some just see a low PageSpeed Insights score and think, “We must get it to 100.” They don’t consider the Chrome UX Experience data or real user metrics. It can get complicated. That’s why I sometimes oppose doing things just to satisfy a score

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, we see that a lot, too. For instance, we recently had a crazy spike in a certain type of Google Search Console error. It referenced URLs we don’t even have. Our SEO or web teams investigate access logs and eventually see that Google’s crawler picks up some URL and triggers these 404 errors. Sometimes we say “Google wouldn’t do that without a reason” or “It must be our mistake.” We do thorough analysis. So we do proper technical SEO as well, but always with the user in mind.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Yes, precisely. It’s a matter of focusing on substance rather than superficial points. Because in marketing analytics, you see cases like 1,000 clicks in Google Ads, but analytics shows 800. You can’t just rely on the first data; you have to investigate discrepancies. If you don’t, you’ll end up making the wrong decisions. That’s also an example of “doing SEO” in a shallow sense.

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, absolutely.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

So aside from SEO, you mentioned paid ads. You must have a decent ad budget for that volume of new users. What channels do you use? Is there anything new you’re trying that’s worked especially well? For instance, these days, there’s also TikTok. Where are you putting effort?

Evren Bayraktar:

We’re not that advanced on TikTok yet. We test a little, but it’s not our main focus. Most of our performance marketing budget is on Google Ads—particularly search. We have serious competition, including some VC-backed companies. They have to spend their investors’ money, while we’re spending our own revenues. That means we have to spend carefully and efficiently. Whenever Google rolls out a new feature, we try it. If we see potential, we build campaigns around it. For instance, we use Dynamic Search Ads for exploration; once we see a successful pattern, we “graduate” that to a dedicated campaign with increased budget.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

So basically, you identify potential from the data and then allocate more budget there. I guess having a self-funded approach makes the founder more cautious with the money. How is Aytekin in that regard?

Evren Bayraktar:

He’s actually very generous, but there’s no “boss vibe” with him. We brainstorm together. Sometimes I keep the SEO team from making certain mistakes, and he’s saved us from going the wrong direction many times, too. We all collaborate.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

He’s very open-minded indeed. He’s also given us mentorship. Every quarter we present our product updates to him, and he gives feedback. I asked him about the old JotForm homepage where the form builder was right there before logging in. I thought that was so cool because you could try it out right away. I asked, “Why did you remove it? I loved it.” He said he also loved it and resisted changing it for a while, but then the team showed him data from A/B testing.

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, exactly. We test everything. The version without the builder on the homepage simply performed better, so we removed it. Then we tried so many new variations that also lost out to that homepage. Currently, we’re testing something else, and the results look good. We may change the homepage soon.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Nice. As a founder, I’ve only started running a few A/B tests in my product journey, but we don’t do it systematically. We rely too much on gut feeling. This can lead to mistakes. But there’s a nuance: sometimes a strategic move doesn’t do well in an A/B test. If Steve Jobs had asked users to pick between a phone with a keyboard and one with just a touchscreen, they might have favored the keyboard. So A/B tests aren’t everything. At big companies like Instagram, sure, they do a lot of tests, but for major product shifts, the vision of the founder or product lead also matters.

Evren Bayraktar:

Right, absolutely. We do plenty of tests, but we also kill a lot of them because they might be misaligned with business strategy. Sometimes a test appears great—metrics look fantastic—but after three or six months, we realize it harms us in a different way.

We had such an issue around 2018–2019 with form templates. We increased signups significantly, but after a while, we realized Google didn’t like it and we started losing traffic. So we reverted those changes. That’s why you need to circle back months later to confirm a test’s broader impacts.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Yes, exactly. So A/B testing is important, but the broader context and long-term effects matter too. And the ability for leadership to override test results is valuable if they see a bigger picture.

Evren Bayraktar:

Definitely.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

So JotForm is known as a form builder. For those who don’t know, can you explain which problems JotForm solves? What other products do you have besides the form builder? You’ve been there for ten years, so you can give us the full rundown.

Evren Bayraktar:

JotForm is primarily a form builder at its core, but we also have other products. Each of these products emerged from user needs related to forms. Some of them have become standalone successes. But yes, at its core, it’s about forms.

If I had to describe it in simple terms, I’d say JotForm is a tool for simplifying day-to-day tasks. People don’t realize how many tasks can be facilitated by an online form. Our template library, for example, has form templates for ordering, for job applications, for so many business processes. We help with digital transformation.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Yes, exactly. Aytekin once described it as: “Our main gateway is form builder—no code, no technical knowledge needed. But we also experiment with side products, though we’re not trying to be everything.” For instance, you have JotForm Sign, which is a big digital signature solution related to forms. And no-code app builder, right?

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, we have JotForm Apps for building no-code apps that run as PWAs. That idea actually came out of JotForm’s own internal need, plus user requests. We had so many forms for our internal processes, and we thought, “How can we centralize them?” The result was an “app.” JotForm Sign was similar; we had a “signature” field in forms and realized we could make a better solution around that. So we launched JotForm Sign. Likewise, we had JotForm Approvals, which evolved into Workflow. Each new product addresses user demand for automation, like “After form A is submitted, form B should be triggered, assigned to X user,” etc.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

I remember you also have a feature that converts PDF forms to digital forms automatically, right?

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, that’s still there.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

That’s incredible. So basically, you’re removing the need for custom form development. Designers and agencies can just embed a JotForm. It’s super useful.

Now, about AI: many big companies are taking steps in AI. Some are implementing features publicly; others are behind the scenes. It’s a risky field if done poorly, and it’s not yet fully defined. What is JotForm doing in AI, at least what you can share?

Evren Bayraktar:

We invest a lot in platform technology. These days we say “AI,” but in earlier years we called it “machine learning.” I recall back in 2016 or so, during one of our hack weeks (where we pause all regular work to experiment), I worked on a project: using machine learning to identify which field type should be used based on the user’s text. So if someone wrote a label, the builder would figure out automatically whether it was a short text field, a date field, etc. We’ve had these ML-based features behind the scenes for a long time. For instance, we do extensive spam and phishing detection. We just don’t really market it as “AI,” but we soon will.

We’ve been working on something we call “AI Agent” for quite some time. Some users are in the beta. It solves user problems in new ways. It’s still developing.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Can I be added to the beta? I’m curious.

Evren Bayraktar:

Sure. In fact, we opened it to Turkish users recently. Anyone from Turkey can try JotForm’s AI Agent. Let me announce it here.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

That’s exciting! So basically how does this AI Agent function?

Evren Bayraktar:

It’s still about forms at the core, but with AI you can fill out forms more easily. Additionally, you can train your own agent, so it’s like having a live assistant next to the form filler. It can ask for extra information that’s not even on the form. For example, if your form doesn’t ask a certain question, the AI might still collect that data. Or if the user is confused about something on the form—“What does this term mean?”—the agent can clarify, because you’ve trained it. We’re aiming for a very sophisticated experience.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

That’s interesting, because conversation-based interfaces are everywhere now. This can be truly game-changing. The user might talk to the agent, and behind the scenes, data is structured in a form. This could be huge. I’m excited for you guys.

Evren Bayraktar:

We’re excited too. We hope it succeeds. We’ll even launch an AI Agent podcast. Aytekin will start one specifically about it.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Yes, by the way, Aytekin also has a book, “Automate Your Busywork.” I’ve read it; it’s really good. Thanks again to him.

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, it tells that whole automation story.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Let’s wrap up by talking about Black Friday. How did it go this year? You seem to run these campaigns regularly. Can you share anything about that?

Evren Bayraktar:

We do a Black Friday campaign every year. This time we tried something different. Normally, we offer a 50% discount. We decided to try 60%. We also considered “50% + an extra 20% in the cart,” but 60% alone outperformed that. We then moved on to an End-of-Year campaign with the “50% + 20%” approach again but with some tweaks—like making the extra 20% valid only for the first three hours, creating urgency. So we did several experiments. This year I was a bit worried because some mid-year campaigns didn’t go as well, but Black Friday turned out okay. We beat last year’s numbers.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

That’s good. We, on the other hand, didn’t see the same results—less than a third of last year’s sales. I’m not sure if it’s because of new competition or the rise of AI. Development is so much easier now that it might be changing the market. You probably see people cloning JotForm’s interface, right?

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, absolutely. They copy the same UI.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

All your decade’s worth of testing could be cloned by someone who says, “These guys did it right.” So that changes the dynamic, but maybe it means we need to compete on brand trust and reliability. Users want to be sure their data is secure. They want to trust the brand. That’s a big differentiator.

Evren Bayraktar:

Yes, exactly. People can copy what they see, but they can’t copy everything hidden under the surface—our logic, algorithms, and experience. So that intangible depth remains unique to us.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Right, well, thank you so much for taking the time today. I hope we can do this again, maybe diving deeper into specific topics like an A/B test case study. It’s really valuable because you do so many experiments, and sharing your insights benefits a lot of people. Thanks again.

Evren Bayraktar:

You’re welcome, anytime. We’re a Turkish-founded company, even though our user base is global. Our hearts are here, so we’re always ready to support the tech ecosystem in Turkey. If we’ve helped anyone in the slightest, that’s great for us.

Emre Elbeyoglu:

Thank you. See you next time.

Evren Bayraktar:

See you. Bye bye.