Practical Founders Podcast

Gopal Krishnamurthy is the founder and CEO of Lumel, which has a suite of products focused on enterprise performance management (EPM). Their apps allow users to plan, report, and analyze data using the modern native app framework vs. traditional SaaS on top of modern cloud data platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, Databricks, and others. Lumel's products provide a full stack of integrated Planning, BI & data apps on the customers' data platforms. He grew his enterprise services company, Visual BI, to over 200 employees and sold that company to Atos in 2021, as he described in his first Practical Founders podcast interview in 2023. Gopal self-funded Lumel with a VC-sized investment and has grown it to over 300 employees in four years. Lumel is already at a revenue run rate of over $12M ARR and is growing fast. Lumel is building its apps using modern cloud data platforms, not siloed SaaS databases, allowing it to manage real-time data across applications. This bold new vision and architecture for enterprise software apps align with modern data approaches supporting AI, creating a billion-dollar opportunity for Lumel in the future. In this episode, Gopal also discusses: The challenge of transitioning from custom services to a no-touch product-led approach selling to enterprises Why VCs wouldn't understand their technology bet and why their patience is paying off What it's like to grow a fast-growth and innovative technology company as a bootstrapper Quote from Gopal Krishnamurthy, founder and CEO of Lumel “The main thing is it's a big market. It's not like we are just trying to get our first $10 million revenue. We have done that with Lumel already. We are looking at how we can get to a billion-dollar ARR business. That's the big, bold vision. We have invested tens of millions already, and we are almost profitable. “We think we can absolutely create a billion-dollar business based on our customer feedback and traction from 3,000 customers. So, it's not a question of product market fit. We worked with hundreds of our enterprise customers and perfected our data app products. “The other thing is that our products can work for smaller and medium-sized businesses because of our architecture and approach. It's completely horizontal: it works for all industries and all customers of all sizes.” Links Gopal Krishnamurthy on LinkedIn Lumel on LinkedIn Lumel website Power BI website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Phil Stern is the operating principal of Mainsail Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in bootstrapped vertical SaaS companies. Mainsail offers deep operating support to the leaders in their portfolio companies to help them grow more efficiently. Phil leads the GTM operations team, helping their founders scale sales, marketing, and success teams.  Phil was an experienced SaaS sales leader at several companies before joining Mainsail to focus on helping their portfolio companies scale up to $30M ARR or more. Phil's team helps founders solve challenging problems with sales leadership, rev ops technology, compensation, marketing analysis and planning, and more with deep operational insights customized for each company.  In this episode, Phil discusses these important topics. The five keys  to hiring your first head of sales to graduate from founder-led sales to a scalable sales team How Mainsail specialists partner with founders and their leaders to help them solve their most important GTM problems quickly How Phil helps with due diligence on potential investments to assess the upsides and opportunities for revenue growth Why Mainsail is focused on vertical SaaS companies with founders who are experts in their domains Quote from Phil Stern, Operating Principal at Mainsail Partners “Hiring a first head of sales is typically one of the first roles we're going to hire. This sales leader needs to be willing to sell the product. You're not coming in at $5 million of ARR to be an armchair VP. You own part of the quota, you're going to cover for a rep at a trade show or on maternity leave, whatever it takes.  “You have to be willing to sell. So if you come in just to strategize and move chess pieces around, it's just not the job for you. “If you don't sell, you won't get close enough to the customer. For these customers in vertical end markets, you need to get close to them, learn from them, understand them, and speak to them.  “It's really back to a bootstrapper mentality. The CEO has been doing absolutely everything up and down the business. I'm asking a sales leader to do everything up and down the go-to-market.” Links Phil Stern on LinkedIn Mainsail Partners on LinkedIn Mainsail Partners website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Sean Hoban was co-founder and former CEO of Kimble Applications, a leading professional services automation (PSA) software for organizations to manage their professional services business's entire operational and financial lifecycle. Sean and his co-founders had already started, grown, and sold a pro services organization before creating a PSA product and building a SaaS business.  With a little funding from the founders and a few angel investors, Kimble started efficiently and grew steadily, eventually raising a practical minority funding round from private equity investors Accel-KKR in 2018. The company grew to $30M ARR before selling most of the company to Accel-KKR in 2021, which merged two PSA companies to create Kontata.  In this episode, Sean discusses some of their deepest strategic opportunities: Learning to grow a SaaS business versus a professional services organization Building on the Salesforce platform and working in that ecosystem Starting in the UK and expanding to Germany and the US Quote from Sean Hoban, former CEO and co-founder of Kimble Applications “One of the most powerful ways I learned as a CEO is to find and talk to other founders in London who were in a similar situation. We would meet for beers, share ideas, and chat on WhatsApp.  “If you have a specific problem, it was valuable to talk to other founders in the same growth stage. And these were founders, not hired CEOs. “It's a lonely job as a CEO. And being able to talk to somebody else who is in a similar position can be cathartic and very helpful.” Links Sean Hoban on LinkedIn Kantata on LinkedIn Kantata SX (formerly Kimble Applications) website Accel-KKR website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Josh LaSov is the founder and former CEO of Satori Reporting, an advanced reporting and business intelligence (BI) solution for mid-market businesses that use NetSuite financial software. Satori provided pre-built reports and dashboards, a tailored data warehouse, and detailed data models that leveraged the popular Power BI software. Josh launched Satori, his second NetSuite solution, in 2019 and grew quickly in the NetSuite ecosystem, with a savvy team and no outside funding. Satori was sold it to private equity buyer Insight Partners in 2022 and combined with another NetSuite provider, Zone & Co. In this episode, Josh talks about the benefits and challenges of building add-on solutions in the NetSuite ecosystem, their ROI of non-dilutive funding and strategic angel investors, selling two companies then getting bored and restless, and starting his third company, Cauzzy.ai to provide AI-powered automated financial analysis and insights. Quote from Josh LaSov, founder of Satori Reports and Cauzzy.ai “When you have a good exit, you can assume the lifestyle that you desire to live, you can slow down. So from 2022 until starting Cauzzy.ai in 2024, I did that, I worked out every day. I listened to more podcasts than any human should listen to. I educated myself, read every newspaper and news site. I took time for myself “What I found was...it wasn't fulfilling. I needed more. I didn't want to be on the sidelines. I felt myself getting slower, like I was retiree. I appreciated the journey more than the destination. But there's a balance and I could achieve that balance. “I needed to do something, but I didn't want to just jump into something just to do it. I was to be patient until I found something that I was passionate about and that's realizable. I thought, I can do this again, I want to do this again. Let's take our time and focus a bit more on balance this time, but let's get back in the game.” Links Josh LaSov on LinkedIn Zone Reporting (formerly Satori Reporting) on LinkedIn Zone Reporting (formerly Satori Reporting) Cauzzy.ai website NetSuite website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Acquire.com, a marketplace of buyers and sellers of smaller, profitable SaaS products with revenues between $100,000 and $5,000,000. Andrew sold his own software company and learned how little support and information was available to sell a software product for under $5-10 million in deal size. Acquire.com has helped over 2000 entrepreneurs sell their software products for a combined value of more than $500 million. Acquire offers additional support to help founders package, promote, negotiate, and close their transactions. Potential buyers are vetted for financial viability and identity confirmation before getting confidential details for any deal. In this episode, Andrew describes their typical seller and buyer profiles, the typical process for a founder to sell a small and profitable SaaS company, typical multiples of profit that financial buyers offer, and founder transition periods. Quote from Andrew Gazdecki, founder and CEO of Acquire.com "There are three buckets of active buyers on Acquire.com. The first is below $100,000 net profit. That's going to be an individual buyer looking for something with maybe a little bit of product market fit. They want to take the product, grow it a little bit, see what they can do from there. They're buying a very, very early startup. So some buyers will actually start small and then work their way up. "From $100,000 to $1 million in net profit in our middle range, the buyer will a blend of "micro PE firms" and holding companies that want to get their hands on a business where there's a lot more going on. And then a $1 million in profit and above is going to be for the more traditional private equity or strategic buyers." Links Andrew Gazdecki on LinkedIn Andrew Gazdecki on Twitter Acquire.com on LinkedIn Acquire.com website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Seth Hassell and Clint Ethington are the co-founders of Genius Monkey, a programmatic ad tech platform with proven targeting, tracking, and attribution for optimized results. Seth and Clint were childhood friends who worked on many business ventures before launching Genius Monkey in 2009, leveraging their experience in digital ad technologies.  Genius Monkey grew steadily as a bootstrapped company, with the founders and team working hard for years to improve their platform, prove results to clients, recruit agencies, and grow their team. Most ad tech peers took VC funding and are no longer around, but Genius Monkey is still growing and getting more profitable every year.  In this episode, Seth and Clint talk about their unusual long-time partnership, the power of profits, competing with giants, building a strong company culture, and leveraging non-dilutive funding to grow faster. Quote from Seth Hassell and Clint Ethington, co-founders of Genius Monkey "Don't be afraid to fail with the smaller stuff. A lot of times, people don't take the chance of seeing, "What if we do it this way?" What happens? And all those little things that could become something big, they never pursue because they're comfortable with where they're at." "Fail fast. Try stuff out. If you see it's not working, shelf it and go to the next thing. Move on until you find that one that's doing better than where you're at right now. Then, I will put the determination and the motivation behind it to see it through. Clint and I tried through lots of things that just didn't work out."  "If it wasn't working, we were okay. We wouldn't say, "It's all over, close the doors." It wasn't like that. It was like, "Okay, we know that doesn't work. What's our next thing we're trying?" And we always had different ideas in the background." Links Genius Monkey on LinkedIn Genius Monkey website Cypress Growth Capital website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Shalin Jain is the founder and CEO of HappyFox, a successful bootstrapped company that provides modern help desk management software for customer service, support, and IT management organizations. Shalin and his small team in India built many successful products from 2000-2010, then focused on HappyFox and moved to the US in 2011. HappyFox is a mid-market product that sells across industries and departments with an efficient product-led growth (PLG) approach. The product has matured with successful add-on products for live chat, AI support, business intelligence, and workflows. The company has over 2200 customers, 110 employees, and now $20 million in revenue. Shalin plans to keep growing and leverage modern AI technology to become a much bigger company based on the disciplined product culture they have created. Quote from Shalin Jain, founder and CEO of HappyFox “I think software and its pricing need to be deflationary, just like hardware, where memory prices, hardware prices, and server prices have all been deflationary. But we are now going through a phase where software is actually getting more and more expensive. “With the advent of AI and automation, software will become cheaper and more usage-driven. So, the best survivors in that phase would be the efficiently run companies that have not bloated themselves by charging more today to have more employees and spend more on ads. “I believe software needs to get cheaper because it's getting cheaper to run software every day; it's getting cheaper to outsource to AI and build stuff with the help of AI as well. So software cost should not go up; it should go down.” Links Shalin Jain on LinkedIn HappyFox on LinkedIn HappyFox website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Brian Kesselman is cofounder and now CRO of Skematic, a compliance management and workflow software for financial services firms. Brian was a lawyer for major financial services companies who helped manage internal compliance in this highly regulated industry. He took a job selling compliance software and broke sales records before starting Skematic with a coworker and launching in September 2022. Skematic grew quickly by solving an acute problem for lawyers and compliance execs just like him in his industry. The company became profitable quickly as Brian focused on outbound selling with cold calls and savvy demos to busy compliance executives. They grew fast, were profitable in just over a year, and attracted attention from potential acquirers.  In June 2024, FRT, a larger legal software company, acquired Skematic for an undisclosed amount, including some cash and incentives. Brian and his cofounder still run Skematic and enjoy being part of a bigger software company owned by a private family office that is highly aligned with their culture and values. Quote from Brian Kesselman, cofounder and CRO of Skematic "My co-founder Charles and I had worked at a number of PE-backed software companies. And we had our own opinions about what it's like to work at a PE-backed company." "The family office structure is very different from a private equity firm across the board. They're looking typically to build profitable cash-producing assets. And so that enables our team to think long-term, which benefits not only the founders and the people that are still participating in the upside of the business." "That also means that the clients will benefit because you are going to do things that will benefit the clients every step of the way, one year, two years, five years, 10 years. And that was paramount to us, given that we've grown up in this very niche industry and our reputations to us are pretty much everything we have." Links Brian Kesselman on LinkedIn Skematic on LinkedIn Skematic website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Rebecca Shostak is co-founder and chief brand officer of Flodesk, the popular email marketing software for small businesses that care about beautiful branded emails. After prototyping the product and validating the problem, they launched in 2019 with a viral explosion that still powers their bootstrapped growth.  Six years later, Flodesk has over $30M in annual recurring revenues with 75 employees and over 100,000 paid customers. They have been profitable since the second week after launch, driven by great product design, the email footer “viral loop,” and referrals from customers and influencers.  In this episode, Rebecca shares her insights on product design, their unlimited pricing model, working with her co-founder/CEO, Martha Bitar, why they haven't taken outside funding, and where AI is showing usefulness in their products. Quote from Rebecca Shostack, co-founder of Flodesk “The reason you hire is never to solve a problem. You need to be sharp and figure out how to solve the problem on your own. Then, you hire people once you've proven something.  “When you want to hire someone to run your paid ads, for example, you first need to figure out the basics. Then, you can hire someone to come in to own that so they can scale that operation.  “But it doesn't work to hire someone to come in and figure out something that you can't figure out yourself. How can you hire someone to manage something you don't understand?” Links Rebecca Shostak on LinkedIn Flodesk on LinkedIn Flodesk website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Brian Dosal was the founder and CEO of BrightGauge, a software company he bootstrapped and grew to almost $10M ARR with his brother before successfully selling the company in 2019. BrightGauge was a business analytics and dashboard for key metrics for the Managed Service Provider (MSP) industry.   After his intense 9-year journey at BrightGauge, Brian “retired” to spend more time with his growing family. He enjoyed his free time but eventually returned to the software startup game with his second company, Strety.   Strety is a fast-growing SaaS business with a popular app for small businesses using the EOS® approach to manage their businesses. It has 10 employees, hundreds of customers and partners, and no outside funding. Brian brought back some of his previous team to build another sustainable and valuable software company. Links Brian Dosal on LinkedIn BrightGauge website Strety on LinkedIn Strety website Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) website Traction book by Gino Wickman Anything You Want book by Derek Sivers   The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Dave Yuan is the founder of Tidemark, an active growth equity investor focusing on vertical SaaS companies with outsized advantages that can become “control points” in their markets and grow very big. Dave and Tidemark have invested in successful companies like Toast, ServiceTitan, Karbon and Dutchie.  In this episode, Dave shares some of the most useful strategic growth frameworks for vertical SaaS companies to grow through winning market share, expanding with additional products, and even extending through an industry ecosystem serving new markets. We also talk about the impact of AI on established vertical SaaS players and how it's both an opportunity and a thre Tidemark supports the global community of practical vertical SaaS founders by publishing their strategic growth frameworks, their annual Vertical SaaS Benchmarketing Report,  and they host the annual Vertical SaaS Collective Live conference for founders.  Quote from Dave Yuan, founder at Tidemark “Vertical SaaS founders should not be asleep with AI. You can wave it off, view it as a toy, and say that no one's going to trust that outcome or use it. That may have been the case, but things are changing really quickly. “Lots of smart people are making it better every month, and you have a massive opportunity to improve it with your data and workflow. “Jump into it to control your destiny. Don't get caught sleeping without AI in your product in a useful way.” Links Dave Yuan on LinkedIn Tidemark on LinkedIn Tidemark website Tidemark Vertical SaaS Knowledge Project  VSaaS Collective Live 2025 conference Vertical SaaS Benchmark Report 2024 The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Dori Yona is co-founder and CEO of SimpleClosure, a technology- and people-powered company that helps founders wind down and dissolve a startup or business that is no longer viable. Shutting down a business can be complicated, costly, and risky for founders. SimpleClosure manages the unique processes with automation and expert support.  SimpleClosure has helped tech startup founders wind down over 500 startups, businesses that closed or have gone through a sale of assets. It manages the important steps of a winddown, including legal, regulatory, employees, investors, intellectual property, customers, data, and more.  In this episode, Dori shares the key considerations for SaaS founders who have run out of VC funding or need to shut down their companies for other reasons.   Quote from Dori Yona, CEO of SimpleClosure “The biggest thing for software startup founders and CEOs is to move fast. Your time is your biggest resource in life as an entrepreneur, whether you're venture-backed or bootstrapping. You're spending your time,  you're spending your energy, you're spending the best years of your career. “So move fast, learn fast, test fast, iterate quickly, grow fast, fail fast. Ultimately, when you're building your own business, you're sacrificing an easy, convenient, cushy job anywhere else to take this risk. “The faster you can grow, learn, build, and fail, the better. It's ultimately to your advantage to make the most of your time. Our time is our most expensive resource.” Links Dori Yona on LinkedIn SimpleClosure on LinkedIn SimpleClosure website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Howard Gottlieb started Read-A-Thon in 2012 as a reading-based fundraising platform that helped students raise money while boosting education. Their easy platform and simple fundraising approach created amazing results. The Read-a-Thon business grew steadily and profitably without any outside funding. Read-A-Thon helped over 4000 schools and students raise over $30 million in donations. Their platform has tracked over 30 billion reading minutes by students who have used it to earn donations.   Read-A-Thon was successfully acquired by private equity investors in early 2023 for an undisclosed amount. The business has continued to grow and expand with a new CEO and key executives, with Howard on the board as an advisor and now a minority investor in the company.  Quote from Howard Gottlieb, founder of Read-A-Thon “I have been very blessed and very lucky in my journey with the success of Read-A-Thon. Everyone should realize that and have some humility. “If you succeed at the game, you can be the smartest guy or the smartest woman with the most brilliant idea, but it still will take 50% or more luck for everything to align correctly to succeed. Just realize that. It takes a lot of good fortune. “At Read-A-Thon, our lucky moment was COVID because online fundraising was only in its infancy. When COVID hit and schools were out, Read-A-Thon was almost the only viable option. Our growth went from 40% a year to 100%, then 150% a year. So that was luck after all these years.” Links Howard Gottlieb on LinkedIn Read-A-Thon on LinkedIn Read-A-Thon website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Richard Change is co-founder and CEO of PFA Solutions, the provider of FirmView software. FirmView® is the leading carry and compensation management platform for private equity investors to manage their internal compensation from fees and carried interest. Richard was a senior architect for a large private equity firm when he discovered this complex problem that was being managed on spreadsheets. He left to start PFA Solutions and bootstrapped the development of FirmView with consulting revenue. From inception, through growth and ultimately acquisition, Richard never took any outside funding. FirmView adoption grew steadily, serving large private equity firms. PFA Solutions eventually grew to 34 employees before being acquired by Allvue Systems in 2024. Allvue is a private-equity-backed software company that serves the alternative investment industry. Quote from Richard Change, co-founder and CEO of PFA Solutions "Once you're in it, once you've decided to start a company, own it. No regrets. No one's going to save you. There's not a fairy godmother that will come and wave all your problems away. You have to own it. "There's no magic wand that will come and wave a wand and say, OK, all your problems are solved. And that magic wand in my mind wasn't outside capital; it wasn't VC funding. That wasn't magic because what do when the money runs out? "Is your product generating revenue? That's the real problem. If there's a problem to be solved and you have a great idea or solution, you can generate revenue from it. Prove to yourself and the world that this is viable and has product-market fit." Links PFA Solutions on LinkedIn PFA Solutions website Allvue Systems website Vista Equity Partners website Podcast Sponsor - Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Rachit Khator is the founder and CEO of Stackby, a no-code spreadsheet and database app builder that allows business users to create powerful spreadsheet-like applications with data links, automations, and workflows. Rachit and his team of 34 employees live in Surat, India, north of Mumbai.  Stackby started when Rachit was working for a corporate venture firm in Michigan, doing repetitive manual data imports and analysis in Excel. He hired a developer to build a better tool and started to sell Stackby to early customers. They followed customer feedback to build an inexpensive and easy-to-use app that competes well with VC-funded competitors like AirTable for specific use cases.  This bootstrapped company has grown in 4 years to serve 75,000 free and paid business customers. Now they are profitable and growing at 15% per month, upselling free business users to paid plans. Rachit has big ambitions for Stackby to serve millions of customers–and be an example success story in the Surat software community. Links Rachit Khator on LinkedIn Stackby on LinkedIn Stackby website Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.  

Joe Hyrkin is the former CEO of Issuu, a content publishing platform for interactive marketing content. Issuu allows you to easily publish printable and PDF materials in various formats to websites and social media. It's a global product-led success story with millions of customers and a successful and sustainable business. Issuu was started by four Danish founders before the company was moved to Silicon Valley in 2013 when Joe was hired as the CEO. Joe ran the company for almost 12 years, growing it profitably most years to almost $30 million in revenue before it was sold in mid-2024 to Bending Spoons, an Italian holding company that is an active acquirer of software companies.  Joe talks about working with their early venture capital investors with a practical and patient approach. In 2021, Issuu raised $20 million in debt to invest in marketing and address technology issues, which helped them grow faster before being acquired.  Quote from Joe Hyrkin, former CEO of Issuu “From 2016 to 2020, we ran Issuu profitably, with what I like to call a ‘pro-grow' approach—profitable and growing. Then, we raised debt to grow faster to about $30 million in revenue. The final year before we sold, we got back to profitability. So we got to profitability twice. “By being profitable, you're committing to your customers that you're going to be around and that they will not have to go find some other solution. You're communicating to your team that this company can be counted on. In 2024 and 2025, everybody wants profitability, unless you're an AI company. “Not having a profitability plan actually creates a lot of risk. I'm not saying you always have to be profitable, but you always have to have a foundation to know how we get to profitability. It's a different way of thinking.” Links Joe Hyrkin on LinkedIn Issuu on LinkedIn Issuu website Bending Spoons website Podcast Sponsor – Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Brian Hamilton is one of America's most successful entrepreneurs and a leading expert on entrepreneurship. Today, Hamilton serves as chairman of software company LiveSwitch. He is known for his pioneering work in fintech, his advocacy for small businesses, and his commitment to criminal justice reform. As the founder of Sageworks (now Abrigo), America's first fintech company, Hamilton developed technology that translates complex financial data, empowering millions of small business owners. Sageworks struggled and grew slowly for 10 years before pivoting to serve local banks and credit unions with financial tools to assess the creditworthiness of their small business loans. The practical SaaS company grew steadily and very profitably to more than 400 employees when it was sold in 2018.  Through Inmates to Entrepreneurs and the Brian Hamilton Foundation, he encourages entrepreneurship as a means to economic opportunity. Hamilton's work has been showcased by major media outlets like CNBC and Good Morning America, and he starred in ABC's Free Enterprise TV series, an award-winning show based on Inmates to Entrepreneurs.  Quote from Brian Hamilton, founder and former CEO of Sageworks "Being the founder of a tech company is like this: You're in a tunnel, it's dark, you're on your hands and knees, you're going through that tunnel, you're groping your way through, keep moving forward. "I know it sounds like such a BS, but we've all been there. I'm telling you, that is the picture: you're in this huge sewer tunnel, it's dark. You just gotta keep moving. Just keep chipping away. You do that, and you will get momentum somehow. "It's like compound interest. You start with a dollar and how does it turn into $10? You build momentum a little at a time. I've got to listen every day. I'm knocking off making the product better. You develop the physical property of compound interest and things will get better." Links LiveSwitch website Brian Hamilton Foundation Podcast Sponsor - Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Scott Desgrosseilliers is the founder and CEO of Wicked Reports, a leading multi-touch marketing attribution software for SMBs who use paid online advertising. Scott is a data and analytics expert who saw the costly limitations of simple performance reports from popular ad platforms.  Wicked Reports was started as a bootstrapped software company in 2016 to serve smaller companies that spend millions on digital ads and other marketing, including email, SEO, and digital events. Determining which marketing activities drive incremental revenue is a tricky puzzle to unravel, but the payback of those insights is huge.  Scott raised a little angel funding and a little SaaS debt and is still going strong with 28 employees and is figuring out their growth and retention puzzle to accelerate growth. Quote from Scott Desgrosseilliers, founder and CEO of Wicked Reports "We had offers, and we could have raised VC funding early on, but then the growth rate we would have had to hit was too high, which didn't make sense for our business. "A competitor of ours took $20 million from a similar VC, and then they had to cut a third of their team. I'm not saying anything against them. They have a nice product and they seem like good guys. They hired a ton of people and didn't hit the growth number, so they had to whack a bunch of them. "Money isn't always the answer. I'm sure there are cases where it solved all sorts of problems, but most VCs want to invest when you already have growth and net revenue retention at 120% when the efficient growth problem's already solved!" Links Scott Desgrosseilliers on LinkedIn Wicked Reports on LinkedIn Wicked Reports website Podcast Sponsor - Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Bryan Forrester is CEO of Boostlingo, a leading on-demand platform for language live interpretation services that is growing quickly and can become a very large company. Boostlingo now has 160 employees and over 17,000 language interpreters who use their software to manage jobs, coordinate schedules, deliver interpreting services, and get paid. Bryan raised some practical funds from angels to start the company in 2016. The company grew 50% or more every year since then. In 2021, Boostlingo raised a growth equity round of funding from Mainsail Partners to provide capital for efficient growth and buy out some early investors. Boostlingo has since made several small acquisitions.  Quote from Bryan Forrester, CEO and co-founder of Boostlingo "Our customers love our software, and our NPS is very high. So when we have customers who love our software, we have high retention and low churn, and our customer costs are really good. When all of that is combined, why would you slow down the growth? "Why would you take your foot off the gas pedal and be very profitable? And we raised a growth equity investment from Mainsail and started spending more on efficient marketing. And it worked. It worked. "What would have happened if we didn't take that small investment with our growth equity partner? We could still have had a positive outcome. We may have already sold the business. But we wouldn't have grown as big as we have become in this very big market." Links Bryan Forrester on LinkedIn Boostlingo on LinkedIn Boostlingo website Mainsail Partners website Podcast Sponsor - Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Jason Fried is the co-founder and CEO of 37signals, makers of the popular Basecamp project management software, which is still growing and very profitable after 20 years. He is going long and still having fun as an engaged CEO, building great products with great marketing that stands out. Jason has long advocated for software founders to avoid VC funding and build sustainable businesses that are great for customers and generate healthy profits for the owners. His best-selling book, Rework, shared his practical approach for entrepreneurs. In this wide-ranging interview, Jason discusses these important topics: How the core principles of Basecamp remain focused on simplicity and essential tools for project management after 20 years. Why Basecamp targets small businesses, avoiding the enterprise market that many competitors chase. Why software should fit the needs of the user, rather than forcing users to adapt to complex tools for big companies How profitability, not growth, provides the freedom to innovate and explore new ideas. Why competing against your costs is more important than competing against other companies. How small teams have the agility to win against big companies. Quote from Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals “My sense of independence has always been important to me. That's why I became an entrepreneur: to do things the way I wanted to do them. Otherwise, why be an entrepreneur? It's true when you work, you're working for your customers. That's always going to be true. But you still have a sense of independence. You get to make your own decisions. “What people don't realize is when you raise money, you don't really work for yourself anymore. You really don't. You work for someone else's schedule, for someone else's fulfillment, for someone else's return. That never appealed to me. “I want our products to explain themselves. I want our success to explain ourselves. I don't want to have to explain myself on a quarterly basis to somebody who's trying to get a return out of me. I'm not interested. So for all those reasons, it just wasn't right to raise big funding.” Links Jason Fried on LinkedIn Jason Fried on Twitter 37Signals on LinkedIn 37Signals website Basecamp website  HEY website Ruby on Rails website Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

    Quote from Russ Perry, founder and CEO of Design Pickle “The game for practical SaaS founders really comes down to recognizing that there is a large market size for very boring niche companies. Finding that niche is the fastest path to success. Don't be afraid to be boring and specific.  “If I were to do Design Pickle all over again, I would have just picked a vertical niche, like we are the graphic design provider for feline mobile cutting trucks or something. There are easily 10,000 mobile pet grooming businesses in the United States, so probably just cat groomers. “We just went super broad when we started, and it's been fine, but it would have been easier for us to have focused on a niche. When you have such limited resources and time and money and capital, having that narrow niche makes it easier to maximize all those dollars and investments.” Links Russ Perry on LinkedIn Design Pickle on LinkedIn Design Pickle website Colorado River Partners Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Sunando Bhattacharya spent 13 years as a business leader in managed IT services companies in India before starting his own cloud tech services business. This company grew slowly and an opportunity arose to create a software product for one of their clients. Two years later, in 2019, they had a few more Apiculus product customers and focused more on the product. Apiculus is a complete "cloud-as-a-service" software platform for data centers to offer, sell, deploy, and manage cloud data services for their own customers. They focused on smaller data centers in emerging markets, including Nepal, Oman, Rwanda, and others in the Middle East and Africa. The Apiculus business grew as it turned into a product-first company. They overcame many challenges during COVD and with customers and partners that didn't work out.  In 2024, the company was acquired by Yotta, and Indian cloud technology company, in a strategic acquisition.  Quote from Sunando Bhattacharya, founder of Apiculus "Somebody asked me what one thing you want for your company. I said I wanted my company featured on Great Places to Work. It's very important that the team that works with me finds this a great place to work. "The only secret ingredient for tech companies is people. It's people who make the technology. And if you take care of your team, you take care of your people, you will always do well. "This isn't just for services companies. Talent and ability are important. But for somebody to bring their best every day to work and deliver something world-class, which is world-beating, it needs a very different level of passion. And that passion will only come from your team if you take care for them." Links  Sunando Bhattacharya on LinkedIn Apiculus on LinkedIn Apiculus website Yotta Data Services website Podcast Sponsor - Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Steve Wolfe and Nate Grossman are co-founders at Growth Street Partners, a growth equity firm focused on investing in early-stage B2B SaaS companies between $2M-$6M in ARR. They discuss how growth equity funding works for SaaS founders and how it allows entrepreneurs to maintain control while still benefiting from investment and liquidity. In this expert episode, Steve and Nate get specific and share real examples of how SaaS founders use growth equity to win bigger, when it can be a good fit for founders, and how founders scale their businesses and win with multiple exits. They also describe: Why Growth Street Partners focuses on practical founders with growth equity. How growth equity is different from traditional private equity and venture capital. Why successful founders are “learn-it-alls” with a growth mindset. How founders can achieve multiple exits through strategic partnerships. Why building a strong team is essential for scale-up success. Quote from Steve Wolfe, co-founder of Growth Street Partners “We know that when entrepreneurs have fun, their companies do much better.  When founders continue to feel real ownership in their business and in the success of their company, they do a lot better, too.  “So we set up our whole firm to enable that. We are investing to own just 20% to 50% of a business, so the founder still controls the company. We go to them with execution ideas and proven frameworks and approaches, but we are really just giving them the tools to make better decisions themselves. “They know they make the decisions in the end, so they will make sure that it's successful. There's something beautiful about that relationship and about helping that founder get to where they want to go while still feeling like they did it.” Links Steve Wolfe on LinkedIn Nate Grossman on LinkedIn Growth Street Partners on LinkedIn Growth Street Partners website Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Raj Bhaskar is a successful two-time practical software founder with one exit. In 2000, he started his first software company, VisualHOMES, to provide a comprehensive financial management software to public housing agencies. With no outside funding, the business grew to serve 65 regional providers serving 2 million residents before Yardi Systems acquired the company in 2010.  After he left Yardi two years later, Raj and his brother launched Hurdlr to reach the wider small business market with a simpler accounting and tax management software than Quickbooks. They started selling their online accounting software to small businesses, but eventually they returned to their original vision to build embedded (white label) accounting that works inside other software.  Hurdlr has grown steadily and has served over 1.3 million small businesses in its 13-year history. Raj invested his own money for many years and a little outside investment. The company is now “lifetime profitable” and growing quickly with 25 employees. Raj loves his work and has no intention of selling the business anytime soon. Quote from Raj Bhaskar, cofounder and CEO of Hurdlr “I ran my previous software business for 10 years before I sold it. And Hurdlr is now over 10 years old. These days, I'm talking about the next 10 years and the next 10 years after that. The next decade and two decades from now, because it's relevant and because I think we're just getting started. “I've seen inflection points in markets, and our market is finally ready. That's the part we didn't have any control over. So, in my view, there is no finish line. This is the starting line where we now have all these assets and need to let more people know we exist. “It's crazy to say after 10 years that this is just the beginning. So I could say probably 20 years from now, looking backward, OK, these are the phases, but I'm in new territory and I know this will be a sustainable and growing business for a long time.” Links Raj Bhaskar on LinkedIn Hurdlr on LinkedIn Hurdlr website Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Vince Hsieh is a two-time entrepreneur who has started, grown, and sold two industrial tech companies that included software and either an RFID or GPS device in the solutions. His second venture, Geoforce, raised a non-dilutive funding round to accelerate global growth before being successfully acquired by private equity investors LLR Partners in 2019. Their royalty-based funding round allowed Geoforce to skip a VC funding round, preserving founder equity and fueling their growth. After their acquisition, Vince shares that the founders saved tens of millions of dollars in founder equity value with their non-dilutive funding from Cypress Growth Capital. Vince eventually joined Cypress as a general partner, working with capital-efficient SaaS founders to help them build more enterprise value. Vince shares how royalty-based funding can be a very useful funding approach in specific situations. Quote from Vince Hsieh, partner at Cypress Growth Capital "Skipping a VC found by using non-dilutive funding made a huge difference to us at Geoforce, especially compared to my first startup where we did not have royalty-based funding in the middle from Cypress. We had just venture capital and then eventually sold to private equity. "So the math of royalty-based funding is amazing because from the time of our funding from Cypress to the time we sold to private equity, our equity, our value more than 10x'd. But we didn't pay back Cyprus anything close to 10X. "Had we raised several million dollars in VC funding with equity, there would have been easily tens of millions of dollars of difference between having done royalty-based funding and equity funding. And that tens of millions of dollars of difference went into our shareholders' pockets, including the founders and our friends and families who invested earlier." Links Vince Hsieh on LinkedIn Cypress Growth Capital on LinkedIn Cypress Growth Capital website Geoforce website Podcast Sponsor – Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Bill Spruill had a successful sales and executive career with two exits before he and his cofounder struck out on their own in the location verification market serving financial and e-commerce companies. Sales grew slowly for several years as they scraped by and kept going. Eventually, they pivoted the company to focus on identity verification and know-your-customer (KYC) with a new approach, and sales grew steadily every month.  Global Data Consortium (GDC) partnered with data providers and fintech companies who became loyal customers, trusted partners, and potential acquirers. The company grew over 100% for several years, acquiring new partners and adding experienced leaders to their small team. In 2022, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) acquired GDC for $300 million in an all-cash deal.  Bill talks about the lessons he learned in their patient growth journey, the challenges of trying and failing to raise startup capital, their frugal focus, their incredible acquisition story, and what he is doing now as a successful former founder.  Quote from Bill Spruill, founder of Global Data Consortium (GDC) “There was a low point in the business where we were just struggling with, Why are we doing this? Are we going to make it? So we stepped back and said, We're gonna do something very simple. We're gonna focus on 10% growth every month, which wasn't a big number then. “We focused on moving the needle 10% every month with revenue. And then you get into the power of compounding. Every month we moved it 10% and we would celebrate. We kept moving that needle 10%, 10%, 10%. “Eventually, that number got to be very sizable where we cracked through $5 million in revenue and we paid off all of our debt. And we became profitable and we kept growing fast. That unleashed the ability to accelerate our growth, growing 100% a year as we got bigger.” Links Bill Spruill on LinkedIn Global Data Consortium (GDC) on LinkedIn Global Data Consortium (GDC)  website, now called LSEG Risk Intelligence London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) website Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com/newsletter.

Troy Munson has been a successful enterprise SaaS sales rep for several years, but he wanted more control over his life—and eventual financial independence. So he launched his own small startup on the side. He learned a lot and sold it before launching his second side gig software company, which he sold for a little bit more.  He started his third side-gig startup, Dimmo, in 2023 to allow enterprise software buyers to watch product demos without talking to sales reps. With the help of co-founders, Dimmo is now live and revenues are growing fast. With a little angel funding, Troy was able to go full-time to make Dimmo successful quickly. Troy is a fast-start SaaS founder, testing ideas and launching companies when traction starts. He and his cofounders don't think about running this forever, but they do want to create a valuable company and achieve financial independence as successful practical founders. Quote from Troy Munson, CEO of Dimmo "I'm like this fast-starter person. I built Vocul and Refurl, my first two side gigs, from an immediate thought: This is annoying, this should be solved. Let me solve it, let me sell it. And then let me see if there's any interest. "With Dimmo, I just wanted to create extra income on the side. The hope for Dimmo was to pay my mortgage with a side gig. I knew software buyers just wanted to watch software demos. So let's just make it like a YouTube for software demos and then we'll just take some sort of revenue. "It blew up on LinkedIn when we launched and grew faster than expected. I had to go full-time and I'm so happy I did. It feels great. I hope I never go back to the side gig guy. I also hope I never go back to any sort of any sort of W-2 work. I'm buying my freedom." Links Troy Munson on LinkedIn Dimmo on LinkedIn Dimmo.ai website Podcast Sponsor - Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Wes Bush is CEO of ProductLed, a coaching and education company that has helped almost 500 serious SaaS founders to succeed with product-led growth strategies, tactics, and execution. These include freemium products and free trials, where the product itself creates the awareness, engagement, and enthusiasm to buy before any human intervention (aka “the required sales demo”). Wes has written two successful books, Product-Led Growth and The Product-Led Playbook, describing key ideas, frameworks, approaches, and examples for SaaS founders. In this expert episode, Wes shares his expertise for SaaS founders, including these topics: Defining product-led growth Transitioning from sales-led to product-led Common mistakes in product-led growth Identifying challenges and solutions for user experience Pricing strategies in product-led growth The future of product-led growth in SaaS Quote from Wes Bush, CEO of ProductLed “The PLG model you choose doesn't matter. Not a bit. Freemium, free trial, credit card up front, whatever. You can make any of those work. That's not the question. What matters in PLG is the actual outcome that we hope somebody will get from our product-led experience? “Does your free motion actually have a transformation in it where they can feel they will grow bigger, save time, and do cool stuff? Because if you don't have that, it's literally just, “Hey, look around, see for yourself, see what you can do in this product. That's not real value.” “What is your PLG outcome that creates that transformation for the user? There has to be tangible value for the user before they ever consider buying. That's what customers want when they buy software now–Show me value first before I think about buying from you.” Links Wes Bush on LinkedIn ProductLed on LinkedIn ProductLed website Free Product-Led Growth book Free Product-Led Growth audio book The Product-Led Playbook book The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Michael McAllister is the founder and former CEO of The CE Shop, the leading provider of pre-licensing and continuing education for real estate professionals in the U.S. Michael started The CE Shop in 2005 by distributing existing training materials from a continuing education provider. They quickly created their own online education solution and proceeded to expand with specific content and compliance elements for each state.  The CE Shop grew steadily without outside funding for 15 years by building a 5-star team, adding partner channels, expanding to new states, and providing more content for the pre-licensing of new real estate agents. The company grew to over 130 employees and expanded faster during COVID. Michael successfully sold the company to private equity investors in 2020 for a “9-figure exit,” meaning more than $100 million, to Waud Capital. On this podcast, Michael shares the realities of their growth journey, including their special emphasis on culture, people, and practical expansion as a bootstrapped technology business.  Podcast Sponsor – Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. Quote from Michael McAllister, Founder of the CE Shop “When founders sell their companies, I'd suggest they need to do it when they hold all the cards. During our first experience with a serious potential buyer, we asked for a lot of information about their business. It was reverse due diligence since I'd be the biggest private investor in their company. “We were two weeks before closing, and I called our banker and said, this is really frustrating that we're asking for all this information and not getting it back. Unless we do, we may need to pull the plug on this deal. We held all the cards. We had a great business. We didn't need to sell like we were completely in the driver's seat.  “It was really difficult but we decided to pull the plug on the deal. The biggest thing was that there was a real mismatch in core values. Our core values were foundational to who we were and who we are as a company. One of them was doing what we said we'd do. And it was a $100 million question. It was a big deal.“ Links Michael McAllister on LinkedIn The CE Shop on LinkedIn The CE Shop website Waud Capital website (acquirer)   The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Last year I interviewed three-time software founder Matt Watson on this podcast about his successful practical founder journeys. Matt leveraged offshore software development talent in his last two SaaS companies to staff up quickly and grow efficiently. His top developers and designers were offshore in the Philippines, but they weren't one-off contractors or difficult-to-manage outsourced agencies. He found an endless supply of top tech talent who became savvy members of his team, working hard every day to get things done fast. So, for his fourth venture, Matt created Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who augment and extend your core dev team. In this expert session with a Practical Founders Podcast sponsor, Matt shares what works and doesn't work for practical SaaS founders who want to offshore some or all of their software development. Links Matt Watson on LinkedIn Full Scale on LinkedIn Full Scale website Startup Hustle podcast Product Driven video channel The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Eric Dill was a successful mortgage broker in Sydney, Australia, who struggled with the same painful problem as every other broker: manually checking with multiple banks to validate and price mortgages for homeowners. Eric and his good friend Angus Keatinge resolved to create a software product to solve this complicated and chronic problem. Quickli was launched in late 2021 and it immediately gained happy customers and fans without any proactive marketing or sales. Three years later, more than 10,000 mortgage brokers use Quickli every week—that's over 50% market share. Quickli has AUD $5 million in ARR with 40 employees. This is an amazing story of two product-focused entrepreneurs who solved a difficult problem and grew a successful software company without any outside funding. Quickli still has almost no marketing staff and no salespeople. Most of their employees are engineers working on the product and customer service. Quote from Eric Dill, cofounder and co-CEO of Quickli “We just cracked the $5 million ARR figure in just three years, which is a big milestone for us. We have 10,000 brokers on the platform, which is over 50% of the total market in Australia. We also have 40 employees, mostly in engineering. “It's been very, very much a story of product-led growth. Our product completely solves the biggest problem that every broker has every day. No other product has solved it. Brokers have been telling each other about Quickli, and we have some really big fans. It's a very tight community of brokers who help each other. ‘How lucky did we get? Because we didn't do anything. Almost marketing and no sales. We have a website. To say we have half a marketing person feels like an overstatement because we have a customer service person who also does some marketing on the side for us.” Links Angus Keatinge on LinkedIn Eric Dill on LinkedIn Quickli on Linkedin Quickli website Podcast Sponsor – Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.   

Guy Rubin is the co-founder and CEO of ebsta, a revenue intelligence platform that works with Salesforce and Hubspot to automatically analyze existing data to improve sales performance. Started in London in 2012, ebsta found success in the early days of the Salesforce marketplace and addon economy as a data tool integrated with customer emails.  ebsta has since become a complete revenue intelligence platform, serving sales teams with 10-100 sales reps. With 400 customers, 30 employees, and no VC funding, ebsta competes with a focused approach to play in the massive Salesforce ecosystem and against huge competitors.  Guy talks about their many pivots, running the business with his wife as cofounder, and the benefits and challenges of not being in San Francisco with VC funding. With deep data across thousands of sales reps, ebsta publishes an annual ebsta Sales Benchmark Report with specific data about close rates, quota attainment, and data-driven factors to improve sales performance.  Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. Quote from Guy Rubin, CEO of ebsta “We found ourselves in a place where we had some amazingly talented, very driven, very focused doers, and they were happy to work together as a common goal and get stuff done. “What moved the bar for me as the CEO was bringing on board advisors. I've now got four board advisors and a chairman sitting around me. We also brought on a CTO, CPO, and CFO, who are very experienced. “So bring in those experts around you, people independent of those doing the doing. Don't get me wrong; you need the doers. They're absolutely vital, but I also needed experts to help me at the running stage. “That was the best thing I ever did: bringing those expert advisors in. And if you're small, I would encourage founders to ask different people to be advisors to give you an outside perspective.  You'd be surprised if people love being asked for help and ask you some difficult questions.” Links Guy Rubin on LinkedIn ebsta on LinkedIn ebsta website 2024 ebsta SaaS Sales Benchmarks Report The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Stuart Draper founded Stukent, an innovative ed-tech company that provides simulated internships for business students. Stukent started by focusing on high-quality digital marketing education for colleges and universities using up-to-date digital textbooks and content. They then added a simulation system for students to practice their digital marketing skills. Stukent grew steadily with less than $1M in outside funding, which helped them bridge the long and seasonal buying cycles of big schools. The team grew to over 100 employees and nearly $10 million in revenue serving marketing professors and their students.  In 2021, they engaged with Vista Point Advisors, an M&A advisor firm, to shop the company to prospective buyers and investors, eventually getting a majority investment from Tritium Partners. Stuart describes the M&A process, what worked well, and how he transitioned out of the company after two years of continued growth.  Podcast Sponsor – Cypress Growth Capital This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. Quote from Stuart Draper, founder of Stukent “When we officially sold a major part of our company to investors, we had a brief celebration. My CFO and I called each other and screamed as loud as we could on the phone in a fun moment. We got there, we did this. My family also took a big trip and I got a break. “But then it was back to work. I was still the CEO and I still run this thing and I've got new investors that also need returns. I'm going to go deliver for these guys. They gave me a big payday, so I'm going to make sure they have a win too. “After the second board meeting with our investors, I realized this is way harder than I thought. After eight board meetings and doubling the business again, I wasn't enjoying this as much anymore. The board meetings were hard for me. Prepping for them was super stressful. “So we found a new CEO for Stukent, and he's doing great. Now I get to sit back in my chair at the board meeting, listen in, share my advice and opinions and come back in three months.” Links Stuart Draper on LinkedIn Stukent on LinkedIn Stukent website Tritium Partners website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Cree Lawson combined his curiosity for technology with his career in the travel industry to create Travel Ad Network, which connects advertisers with travel-related audiences online. Travel advertisers were frustrated with the inability to track whether ad viewers actually visited the destinations they promoted, so Cree figured out a solution and started his second travel tech venture. Arrivalist was created in 2012 to provide offline visitor tracking and analytics to online advertisers in the travel industry. They bootstrapped and grew efficiently, with some revenue-based financing from Lighter Capital, not requiring big outside equity funding to build out their platform and acquire new customers.  They grew steadily and became was through 2019. After the COVID travel disruption faded, Cree sold Arrivalist to Alpine Investors, owners of AirDNA, another travel data company. John is no longer the CEO of Arrivalist, but he is still involved in the company as a board member and spokesperson. Quote from Cree Lawson, Founder of Arrivalist “New entrepreneurs need to answer three questions to see if they have a real business. Can you do it? Will people pay you to do it? Will you get paid more than it costs to do it? You can answer those without spending a lot of money. “Once you answer those three questions, you are off and running. I could answer those questions at Arrivalist, and we didn't need to raise outside funding. Bootstrapping was a bad word in 2011. People told me to stop calling myself a bootstrapper, but it worked well for us.” Links Cree Lawson on LinkedIn Arrivalist on LinkedIn AirDNA website Alpine Investors Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

John Stewart created and sold an engineering services business, then grew a Salesforce integration services company before building some early software products. One of their software experiments allowed Salesforce customers to see and interact with their customer data on a map. When customers paid for it and revenue grew, he and his co-founder wound down services and focused on their mapping product.  MapAnything grew quickly to over $2M ARR as a bootstrapped software company, with some revenue-based financing from Lighter Capital to help test their growth plans. When they focused on field service route optimization and grew quickly, MapAnything raised several rounds of venture capital to grow even faster by focusing its sales and marketing efforts within the Salesforce ecosystem.  MapAnything reached $22 million in ARR before Salesforce acquired the company for $250 million. John stayed on with Salesforce for six months before moving on. John and a co-founder launched Fastbreak.ai three years later, a sports schedule optimization platform for professional and amateur sports leagues.  Quote from John Stewart, former CEO of MapAnything “I tell founders most often that you really need to focus on sales and distribution. As a CEO of a startup in the tech space or SaaS, the only thing that really matters is revenue growth. Technology is technology. Even if you have unique IP right now, it won't be unique soon enough. “So you need to figure out your go-to-market motion. That's the single most important thing. Revenue cures all ills. It doesn't matter what's going on in the company as long as revenue is growing. It's all about revenue growth more than anything.” Links John Stewart on LinkedIn MapAnything on LinkedIn Salesforce website Fastbreak.ai website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.   

Landon Taylor created two successful digital marketing services businesses before starting a product-powered business with recurring revenues. His first agency drove traffic to its customers, which led to his second business, Best Company, which produced qualified leads for large home services businesses through its bestcompany.com consumer review site.  Their work in consumer reviews led them to his latest business, Snoball, a word-of-mouth marketing platform they use to predictably and efficiently drive customer referrals. With their systematic approach and some human-in-the-loop help, Snoball creates a scalable customer acquisition channel for large home services businesses in the US.  Landon speaks openly about his approach to “parlay” one business into another to create new businesses that are larger and more valuable than the last. Rather than raising big VC funding, Landon invests his own resources to find and create new businesses.  Quote from Landon Taylor, CEO of Snoball “Fear can be debilitating for an entrepreneur. If you fear failure, if you take a leap and you're gonna fail, you'll be paralyzed. You won't be able to move forward, see opportunities, and take risks that will open up doors. “You've gotta get to the mindset that failure is not fatal. Everybody who's been successful has failed multiple times, right? So just take the leap. It can be a small leap. Or it could be a mental leap of believing that I can build, I can create, I've got something unique. “It might be as simple as wanting to do a LinkedIn post, but you hit this wall of ‘I can't.' So get beyond that to believe I can, I've got something unique, I can build, I can create.” Links Landon Taylor on LinkedIn Snoball on LinkedIn Snoball website BestCompany.com website Sponsor This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. Connect with Cliff Sentell at cypressgrowthcapital.com/practical to find out how they can help with your practical growth plans.  The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Kyle York was the Chief Revenue Officer of Dyn, a bootstrapped cloud infrastructure that he helped grow and sell to Oracle for over $600 million. He then led product strategy and acquisitions in Oracle's cloud infrastructure group before going out on his own to invest in SaaS startups and help them grow.  York IE is both an advisory firm with tech-enabled services to help early-stage B2B SaaS companies grow  and an investment firm that has invested in over 60 practical SaaS companies.   In this expert session, Kyle discusses why his efficient funding approach appeals to practical SaaS founders and why it is different than traditional VC funding. We discuss the current environment for funding, growth, and exits for practical founders. We also dive into what's working and not working in 2024 to drive growth in capital-efficient SaaS businesses.  Quote from Kyle York, Founder of York IE “It's gonna sound so simple, but founders need to set the long-term vision of what they want to be and what they want to build. Then make sure that every decision you make backward to today is working towards fulfilling that vision. “What I see too often is companies pigeonholing themselves down a certain trajectory or path that isn't even aligned exactly with what they wanted. This can create problems when you're raising money from outside investors if what investors want is not the same as your vision and timeline Links Kyle York on LinkedIn York IE on LinkedIn York IE website Sponsor This week's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. Connect with Cliff Sentell at cypressgrowthcapital.com/practical to find out how they can help with your practical growth plans.  The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Mike Kovarik is the founder and former CEO of Attribytes, a software company he started, grew, and successfully sold in just over five years. Mike was a data analytics leader at large food distributors, where he discovered a chronic challenge with low-quality product data in their massive e-commerce systems. He quit his job, built a product with a friend, and his former employer became his first customer.  Attribytes grew steadily in the next few years, serving food distributors and retailers in the US, with Mike making the first sales and slowly adding new employees. He invested his savings in the company and raised just over $2 million from a strategic and several angel investors in Phoenix, Arizona. They grew to nearly $5 million in ARR in 2019 with just over 20 employees.  In 2020, Mike sold the company to Syndigo, a larger data management provider that served the same industry. He joined Syndigo for over a year to lead the acquisition of other data management companies to expand their product offerings. When their acquisition strategy changed in 2022, Mike left to take a break and then acquire and retool another vertical software company called ShopControlller. Quote from Mike Kovarik, founder of Attribytes "I built a little spreadsheet and I put in what our revenue was, what our current valuation was, and then what that exit would look like after taxes for me, just to see what that dollar amount was. We were at almost $5M ARR, and we were getting interest from acquirers, so it was already interesting. "I created another spreadsheet to show what would happen if we raised big VC funding and invested that lover for 5-10 years to grow. What rate of return would I get? How would we be diluted? What annual recurring revenue would we need to get to, and what valuation would that be? What would my dollar amount be? "The reality is that the amount for me would be pretty close to the same if we sold now or raised a big VC round. And I'm not trying to risk everything to potentially buy a plane. I could have a big exit now and have a lake house and a place in Flagstaff, and my kids' kids will be good. What else do I need?" Links Mike Kovarik on LinkedIn Attribytes on LinkedIn Syndigo website ShopController website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Brothers David and Chris Sinkinson attended Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, when David learned of the problems maintaining the blue emergency phones on campus. He proposed a location-aware mobile safety app, so Chris built it himself, and it worked great.  AppArmor grew steadily to become the most popular university mobile safety platform in Canada and the US, and over 250 universities use it. With no outside investors, they bootstrapped the company to US$5 million ARR with serious profits before selling the company to Rave Mobile Security for US$30 million. They stayed on for another year in transition before writing a book and running a podcast called Startup Different. Quote from Dave Sinkinson, CEO and co-founder of AppArmor ”The biggest advice I give new founders is to ‘ignore that startup noise.' Throughout our experience, we had lots of people who I loosely referred to as haters. People who said we're "just a lifestyle business” or our idea is never going to work. One person literally told my cofounder brother Chris that we weren't even a startup. “Just ignore those people. Don't pursue validation from your peers. Instead, pursue validation in the market. A couple of years into the business, that realization was a big change that helped me stay on track. So, my advice for SaaS founders is to ignore the haters and enjoy the journey.” Links David Sinkinson on LinkedIn Chris Sinkinson on LinkedIn AppArmor on LinkedIn AppArmor website Rave Mobile Security website Startup Different podcast and book Sponsor This week's podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region.  Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines, who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io. The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Dan Balcauski is the founder and principal consultant of Product Tranquility, a SaaS pricing consultancy. Dan shares the core building blocks of SaaS pricing, including customer segments, value, competition, and positioning strategy. Dan also describes the common mistakes in pricing and the importance of having structured pricing conversations with customers. In this expert interview, Dan shares his perspectives on key SaaS pricing challenges: Why CEOs need to be involved in pricing decisions as pricing and packaging affect everyone in the organization. How understanding customer segments, value drivers, competitive alternatives, and differentiation are key building blocks of SaaS pricing. Why choosing the right pricing metric and offer configurations can help target multiple customer segments. Why having pricing conversations with customers can provide valuable insights into their perception of value and willingness to pay. How pricing plays a role in positioning and branding. How AI is impacting pricing strategies in the SaaS industry. Quote from Dan Balcauski, Principal at Product Tranquility “One of the healthiest ways to think about pricing is that price is a thing, but pricing is a process. Like any other process in your company, it probably will have a process owner and some sort of document to describe it. “Your first pricing iteration is probably not going to be your best iteration. You'll keep improving it. You don't prevent your team from answering customer support tickets until you have the perfect customer support process. It's the same with your pricing. “You're going to make mistakes. Those mistakes will be way less fatal than you imagine they will be in your head. But as long as you're committed to improving that process over time, you're going to start moving in the right direction.” Links Dan Balcauski on LinkedIn Product Tranquility website SaaS Scaling Secrets podcast Sponsor This week's podcast is sponsored by Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I've interviewed here on this podcast. Learn more at cypressgrowthcapital.com, then connect with Cliff Sentell at Cypress to have a conversation about your growth plans.  The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Rob Farrow was an experienced marketing executive and his wife Christina Farrow was a successful professional wedding planner. They discovered there was no good software for wedding planner pros, so they decided to build software themselves. They invested their savings, built a loyal team, and started Aisle Planner to serve other wedding planner pros with a complete solution to power their businesses.  Aisle Planner grew slowly as they overcame huge obstacles, listened to their customers, and built world-class software that changed how events are managed. Aisle Planner is now the leading all-in-one software for wedding planners and event professionals with over 4000 customers.  After struggling through the COVID-19 shutdown several times, Rob and Christina decided to sell Aisle Planner to Fullsteam, a software holding company. They stayed for several years to meet their earn-out commitments and run the company with the same team.  Quote from Rob Farrow, co-founder of Aisle Planner ”There's a very fine line between arrogance and ignorance. And somewhere in there is where I was living in this. When we started, I was so sure we would succeed that I ignored obvious signs of failure. I just believed wholeheartedly. I believe in myself, I believe in my wife, and I believe in our team.  “If you have that belief, you can achieve things. And I know that sounds very cliche, but you have to have that belief. If you're doing it for the right reasons, you'll have that belief. If you're doing it to get rich quick, you won't. “There's a bunch of obstacles that you don't even know are coming our way. With that mindset of belief and just forging ahead, you're ready for any obstacle. They're not obstacles; they're just things you deal with.” The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Krista Morgan started her first tech company by raising funding and trying to grow very fast. When the company faced a big issue and failed, she learned that big funding was more of a problem than a help in the growth and wind-down processes. Krista is now CEO and General Partner of Stage Fund, an early-stage private equity fund that makes control acquisitions of venture-funded SaaS companies that are stuck and need an alternative option to continue in a practical and profitable way. In this expert episode, Krista explains: Why “growth at all costs” rarely works for software companies Why VCs and funded founders don't plan for the likely scenario that the company won't have a successful exit What's happening in M&A for practical SaaS companies Why acquiring software companies to grow is often less risky than growing organically How to approach potential future acquirers to have a conversation about someday joining forces Quote from Krista Morgan, General Partner of Stage Fund “The game for practical startup founders is to find a way to make good decisions in the reality of today while still holding this big vision of the future. We can't just grow at all costs, and we can't just make all these big investments. “There's this misconception that practical founders don't have a big vision of the future. Of course, they do. They're just thinking about it and getting there in a different way. And that's where we want to be. “When I was founder of my first tech company, I thought money was always the answer. But money is usually NOT the answer. There is usually an answer, and maybe it takes money to get there, but it's not the magical thinking of, If I just had five more people, I'd be here. Maybe, or maybe you wouldn't. There's no guarantee on that.” Links Krista Morgan on LinkedIn Stage Fund on LinkedIn Stage Fund website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Ian Manners was a successful consultant for pharmaceutical companies in the US when he discovered a major problem that needed a software solution. Big pharma companies provide financial assistance funding for patients who require their drugs but struggle with high costs, but these funds are difficult to access and manage for patients and healthcare providers.  Ian and his cofounder created Vivor in 2014 to connect this financial assistance funding to patients through healthcare providers like hospitals, medical offices, and healthcare networks. The bootstrapped software startup grew slowly at first but eventually became profitable as it scaled up. Since inception, Vivor has helped over 100,000 patients receive over $2 billion in financial assistance to offset the high costs of prescriptions.  During the COVID crisis that hit the US healthcare industry, Ian decided to merge Vivor with TailorMed, a VC-funded competitor, in a cash and stock deal. He stayed on for two years during the transition and is now looking for his next entrepreneurial adventure in healthcare software.  Quote from Ian Manners, cofounder and former CEO of Vivor “The overall idea of merging our companies and having stock and some cash in our acquisition structure made sense for both parties. If the company that's acquiring your company is huge and they've got big cash reserves, they buy someone out. But if you're combining with another startup, that cash is precious. They don't want to spend all of it.  “So it really makes sense to do a combination of the two and to include equity in the deal. I think that part was absolutely a win-win, even when, as you're going through that process, you negotiate all the details. “It's a huge bet for us to take equity as part of our deal, We became an investor in the company that bought us.. I think for anyone facing something similar, my advice would be to just slow down that part of it and really think about and digest the fact that you're becoming an investor in the combined company. “ Links Ian Manners on LinkedIn Vivor website TailorMed on LinkedIn TailorMed website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Dave Lambert and the team at Right Side Capital Management are the most active venture capital investors, having invested in over 2,000 startups since 2009. Right Side Capital is a “pre-VC” institutional investor that operates very differently from traditional VCs: investing when SaaS companies have just a little revenue using a submission form on their website, then responding quickly and making investment decisions in a week. They also invest in practical SaaS founders with capital-efficient approaches who expect to sell their companies someday for less than $100M. In this expert episode, Dave shares practical insights for SaaS founders who don't expect to play the big VC funding game: Why raising Series A or B funding rounds from VCs reduces your odds of a successful exit What founders should be focused on when they get their first customers and revenue Why most VCs don't invest when you have just a few customers and a little revenue How the founders they invested in are using AI technology to grow more efficiently What's happening right now with acquisitions of SaaS companies for $25-$100M enterprise value Quote from Dave Lambert, Right Side Capital “More often than not, at the stages that we're investing and someone has $4K, $8K, $20K MRR, the founders are still supremely confident and think they figured out their exact ICP and how it's going to grow in scale. They think, We're just going to take your money, and it's going to be straight up from here. And it never does, or almost never does. “We're having conversations with founders where we're sharing, Hey, just so you know, 90% of our companies miss their revenue targets massively in their first year. So you should assume that you are going to as well. “But guess what? They all spend exactly what they thought they were gonna spend or more, usually. Just know that that's gonna be the case and have a plan for where you're still alive if things don't go as expected.” Links Dave Lambert on LinkedIn Right Side Capital Management on LinkedIn Right Side Capital Management website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Todd Watson is the owner and CEO of Showit, a popular no-code website builder and platform for designers and photographers. Todd is a native of Phoenix, Arizona where he started as a videographer before joining a friend in 2007 to create a scrappy software business that made inexpensive photo-presenting and sharing tools for photographers. The Showit company was created when Todd took one of their two products and half the small team in 2010 to spin off Showit as an independent business. The small revenue from the small customer base and his own savings allowed them to rewrite Showit for the cloud and then continue their fanatic customer focus to keep growing every year—without any outside funding. Now Showit is used by 50,000 designers, photographers, and small businesses as their website platform using its elegant “Photoshop-like” no-code visual builder. The Showit company is growing quickly every year and is profitable, yet Todd has no interest in taking outside funding or selling his beloved company. Links Todd Watson on LinkedIn Showit website Showit website design marketplace: Showit on LinkedIn The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.   

Erin Fletter had a long career in the restaurant business before starting an after-school enrichment program to teach kids how to cook at her daughters' school in 2011. Her cooking program became popular, and she improved and expanded it to become a paid program called Sticky Fingers Cooking. Soon, she had a sizable business with over 100 chef-instructor employees who conducted engaging classes daily in Denver. Her team created custom software to help manage their complicated operations, from enrolling students, coordinating instructors, and building relationships with schools to handling payments and payroll. The software grew slowly initially but eventually became a powerful system that helped them scale their business and run efficiently.  Erin considered turning her business into a software company, as many tech-powered businesses do. Instead, they kept improving the software and expanding operations, serving over 100,000 students and thousands of schools and venues. Now Sticky Fingers Cooling is a fast-growing and successful franchise business with a software superpower.  Quote from Erin Fletter, CEO of Sticky Fingers Cooking “Our business has a lot of logistics, coordination, and operations. Our own custom software, we call it the Dash, it takes about 85% of all operations off the table for humans. This enables our chef-instructors to connect with their students and our franchise owners and regional directors to focus on building relationships with schools and parents. “Over the years, we have been contacted by very large organizations like YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs, and other after-school enrichments about our software. They would see our automatic rosters getting texted and emailed at the venues that we were teaching in, and they asked, What are you using? What is this? And we told them, Well, it's our own software, sorry.  “We had talked for years about selling our software as a white-label solution because the demand is there. We've had inquiries for the last 10 years. That was a direction we could have taken.  “But I'm just laser-focused on Sticky Fingers Cooking. It's a very simple business, and our technology helps us do it incredibly well. We want to be the best at what we do. I didn't really want a diversion from the path of taking our business national through franchising.” Links Erin Fletter on LinkedIn Sticky Fingers Cooking on LinkedIn Sticky Fingers Cooking website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.   

In this second of two episodes, Practical Founders Podcast host Greg Head discusses the next five important things venture capital investors don't tell new SaaS startup founders. Greg emphasizes that VCs invest in very few businesses and seek big wins. He highlights the importance of understanding the game of venture capital funding and the alternatives available to SaaS founders. Check out last week's episode, in which Greg discusses the first five things that VCs don't tell SaaS startup founders about raising VC capital. Quote from Greg Head, Host of the Practical Founders Podcast “Professional VC investors are expecting very big results when they invest. If you sell a piece of your company to get a $5 million Series A investment, that typically ends up being about 20 percent of your equity. So you've just valued your company after funding at about $25 million. “$25 million is the point where the venture capital investor comes in, so you can't sell your business for $30 million or $50 million anymore. That wasn't why the VC invested. They probably don't even want you to sell your business for $75 million. That's just a 3X exit. “That's not what they invested their precious cash. They're going for a 10x or 20x exit. So even when you just take $5 million from VCs, you can't sell your company for less than $100 million and have everyone win. You have to sell for $500 million or more for everyone to be happy, including the founders.” Links Greg Head on LinkedIn Practical Founders website Practical Founders Podcast Greg Head's blog Part 1 – The 10 Things that VCs Don't Tell Startup SaaS Founders – Greg Head

In this episode, Practical Founders Podcast host Greg Head discusses the most important things venture capital investors don't tell new SaaS startup founders. He emphasizes that VCs invest in very few businesses and are looking for big wins. Greg highlights the importance of understanding the game of venture capital funding and the alternatives available to SaaS founders. Quote from Greg Head, Host of the Practical Founders Podcast “If you're thinking about raising VC investment, do your homework so you know what you are signing up for before. VCs are not evil people, and it's not a bad business model—for them.  “The world has changed for SaaS founders in the last 5-10 years, and it's still changing. You no longer need VC funding to start most B2B SaaS software companies. It's 10 times cheaper to create a sellable SaaS product and go to market now. And founders can get higher multiples earlier when they sell their companies. VC funds are also much bigger, so it's riskier for founders to play that game. “You just don't need to make a crazy all-or-nothing bet that your company will create a billion-dollar exit in seven years, which VC investors require to win. The best case scenario for 80 to 90 % of software companies is NOT to raise big institutional venture funding.” Links Greg Head on LinkedIn Practical Founders website Practical Founders Podcast Greg Head's blog     The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies—without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app.

Mike Trasatti spent 10 years in the automotive dealer software business before he found an auto dealer in Iowa who had built is own complete software system. They partnered up in 2008, and Mike became the first CEO of the spinout software company, DealerBuilt. DealerBuilt grew slowly as a bootstrapped startup in a market full of large incumbent competitors. They had a better approach to managing multiple dealers in a group with their dealer management system (DMS). DealerBuilt is powerful software that manages the entire financial operations of an auto dealer in the US.  They grew steadily to 450 dealer customers and 100 employees in 10 years before deciding to partner with ParkerGale, a private equity investor, to help them with their next growth stage in 2019. Mike continued as CEO until 2023, navigating through the COVID years and acquiring several “tuck-in” products to extend the DealerBuilt solution. Mike is now an independent advisor to DealerBuilt and other organizations.  Quote from Mike Trasatti, former CEO of DealerBuilt “You're constantly challenged in the entrepreneurial world. Do you really know what you're doing? Self-doubt can be tremendously harmful to CEOs. I don't think you can get into this business without a strong image of yourself and real confidence. “But you have to balance confidence with humility because you'll make mistakes. You're going to have setbacks every week, and some very big ones, too. You can't lose enthusiasm: You need enough confidence that you're on the right path and that will carry you more than anything else. Those who don't lose enthusiasm win. “When you have both confidence and humility, you won't be afraid to be around people who are better than you. And you'll feel comfortable in that space, leading smart people who are championing your journey. They will look at you and think, I want to be there with you to champion this for you. That's success as a leader.” Links Mike Trasatti on LinkedIn DealerBuilt on LinkedIn DealerBuilt website ParkerGale website – private equity investor in DealerBuilt The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Brian Abernethy, founder of Utopaya, is an expert in helping SaaS leaders navigate the complicated process of adding payments monetization to their product offerings and business strategies. With a long history in the payments industry, Brian has worked with hundreds of early-stage SaaS leaders and their investors to optimize their payments strategies. In this expert podcast interview, Brian explains the basics of payments monetization for practical SaaS founders, answering questions like these: When should SaaS companies consider monetizing payments and when is it not a good fit? What are the first steps to adding a profitable payments offering to your SaaS product? What's happening in the payments industry to make it easier or harder for SaaS companies? How do investors value payments offerings in a SaaS business? What are the biggest misconceptions and mistakes that SaaS companies make when get started with payments? How can SaaS businesses lower their payments bills for the credit card customer they take from their customers? Quote from Brian Abernethy, principal at Utopaya “Most software companies are looking to include some type of fintech offering. Payments is typically the first one of those. These software companies want to own not only the bigger portion of revenue, of course, but also mprove the customer experience. “Recent consolidation in the fintech and payments industry has created new options for SaaS companies to monetize payments. The big payments providers are now much bigger and have moved upmarket, creating a gap. Many new payments players are designed for smaller SaaS companies, with purpose-built platforms, APIs, and more support for integrated software solutions. “There are more compelling solutions for SaaS companies to launch truly white-labeled, profitable, and easier-to-implement payments solutions. Also, the market data show that it does positively change the customer experience, so these smaller payment companies are winning share at a fast clip.“ Links Brian Abernethy on LinkedIn Utopaya on LinkedIn Utopaya website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com. 

Jeff Corn is the co-founder and former CEO of Virtuance, one of the US's leading real estate photography and marketing providers. In 2010, Jeff was in the real estate investment business and wondered why it took $10,000 and nearly a month to get professional photos for new listings. He and a cofounder started taking photos to serve busy real estate agents to learn what was needed and improve the quality and speed of delivery with technology.  Virtuance started with the vision of a software-only solution, but the business started growing with a high-quality, done-for-you service with a fast turnaround, powered by its technology, partners, and systems. The company grew steadily every year without any outside funding to eventually serve more than 20,000 real estate agents with 100 employees and more than 300 local photography partners. This tech-enabled services company has SaaS-like gross margins. re-occurring revenue, and some profits In 2022, Jeff successfully sold Virtuance to Diakrit, a global real estate marketing technology company backed by private equity investors. Jeff stayed on for two years after the sale, until last month. Quote from Jeff Corn, co-founder of Virtuance “The biggest reason that founders fail is that they actually fail to launch. The hardest thing to do is to fricking push your product and get it out in the world– because it's messy. It's certainly far from perfect, and it may not even work very well. But getting that feedback is so important to figure out what to do next. “I see too many founders try to perfect it before they get it into the market. And then when it gets into the market, they might think it's perfect, but the market may not. And at that point, they already invested too much in it. It's not that we're shipping something that we don't think works; we are shipping something that we know checks just one of the boxes that our customers need. “It's just human nature that we want to put out good work, we have pride in our work. It's one of the one of the real paradoxes of entrepreneurship is that we are all perfectionists and Type A personalities. We want to control it and we want it to be right, but also to be successful. The only way to succeed is to let go of some of that, to allow our teams to do the work, and be able to ship an imperfect product to get real feedback.” Links Jeff Corn on LinkedIn Virtuance on LinkedIn Virtuance website DIAKRIT website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.