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.