Chris Erler was co-founder and COO of ComX, a sales pipeline generation for mid-market B2B companies in Germany and Europe. Chris and two other founders started the company in 2018 to conduct turnkey modern digital marketing and lead generation solutions for traditional German companies.

As a tech-enabled service that combines technology, data, and people-powered solutions, ComX delivers proven results through subscription and outcome-based pricing. They grew quickly to approximately $20 million in revenue in four years before being acquired by the private equity firm FLEX Capital. 

In this episode, Chris talks about:

• Growing a team of 70 employees in South Africa
• Starting in Germany with mid-market companies
• The challenges of debt financing of private equity buyouts

Quote from Chris Erler, cofounder of ComX

“99% of the time, I ask the founder, Why are you raising money from investors that early? I'm very pushy on that one because I know the freedom that you can create when building a bootstrapped business.

“For me, raising money from investors and giving away shares very early means you’re not focusing on customers, but rather focusing on collecting capital to build the product without having it validated too early. I just share our bootstrapped story with ComX which I believe works well. 

“That's why I'm a big fan of your podcasts. There's a huge education needed, especially in Europe. People need to be educated on how to found properly. Of course, it can go well, but the chances that something f***’s up are much higher. And then young people are in a very bad situation.”

Links

• Chris Erler on LinkedIn
• ComX on LinkedIn
• ComX website
• FLEX 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.

Aaron Steffey is the co-founder and co-CEO of Propeller, an online platform that enables insurance agents and brokers to issue surety bonds instantly — without the lengthy paperwork or back-and-forth typically involved in bonding. Aaron was an insurance agent, and his co-founder cousin, Chris, was a surety bond underwriter before 2019, when they set out to revolutionize the way surety bonds are bought and sold.

They initially bootstrapped with a software development partner who accepted equity instead of fees. Their first version drastically simplified the process of buying and selling surety bonds in the digital world, allowing them to grow quickly. They raised $7 million in SAFE notes from strategic partners to accelerate growth in 2021 and grow to nearly $20 million in revenue. They sold 100% of the company to Arch Capital in a strategic acquisition in early 2024.

In this episode, Aaron also talks about:

• How this sleepy, paper-based market changed quickly in COVID
• Why they raised growth funding from strategic investors and not VCs
• Why they sold the company and are still leading the business after the sale

Quote from Aaron Steffey, co-founder and co-CEO of Propeller

“My biggest advice for startup founders is simply just that endurance wins. It’s the whole thing of getting back up after you're knocked down, like everyone says. I had to live that so many times. So many No's when it came to our first carrier pulling out. No, I don't want to invest. No, I don't want to use your surety product. 

“There were so many times when I wanted to give up. And the same with my cousin. Had we not founded the company together, I don't know that we would have continued because there were probably times when I would have given up.  

“As long as both of us weren't on the floor, one of us would just pick the other up when the other person usually was more sane, and we dragged each other along. 

“A successful founder needs to have a pretty high pain tolerance and endurance to succeed. You just have to keep pushing forward. It just sounds so cliche, but that’s what it was for us.”

Links

• Aaron Steffey on LinkedIn
• Propeller on LinkedIn
• Propeller website
• Arch 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.

Roy van den Broek is the founder and CEO of Rentman, a rental business management software platform for event and media production companies. Roy built software for his event equipment rental business in the Netherlands. He had over 100 software customers in Europe before selling his rental equipment company in 2015 to focus on growing his Rentman SaaS company. 

Rentman grew slowly and profitably as word of mouth spread in the industry and their product evolved. In 2024, after growing to nearly 100 employees and 200,000 users across 100 countries, Roy raised a $22 million growth equity round from Expedition Capital to derisk the founder's investment and add growth capital to continue expanding. 

In this episode, Roy discusses how they managed the painful growth stages as they expanded from one employee to 80 global employees, building a multi-lingual product and business, and why he chose to raise a significant growth equity investment. 

Quote from Roy van den Broek, founder and CEO of Rentman

“We had a lot of interest in investing in Rentman after COVID, so we ran a quick process. We ended up with 3 term sheets. You have multiple ways to look at these term sheets. You can look at the numbers and the valuation, which is a big part. 

“But what's often overlooked is the other terms. The other terms are as important as the valuation because they really determine the way you work together. I think these terms might even be important or more important than the valuation. You got to understand their game and really figure out if you could get some alignment. 

“In essence, you are negotiating the amount of autonomy that you have as a founder. That's basically what we prioritized. Like the board seats and who makes certain decisions, what are the decisions that require a majority vote? And I think we were able to get 100% autonomy on our side.“

Links

• Roy van den Broek on LinkedIn
• Rentman on LinkedIn
• Rentman website
• Expedition 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.

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.”

• 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."

• 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."

• 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.”

• 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.