ProfitLed Podcast

Melissa and Todd dive  into the thrilling and nerve-wracking experience of launching eWebinar's MVP.  While  many people see product launches as the end goal and celebratory occasion, Melissa explains why it's often more stressful instead because that's when the dreams you've sold become reality.

They reminisce about getting stuck in a never-ending rabbit hole of features, how frustrated David (CTO) was, and how they ultimately had to choose a launch date just to get the product out the door.  Melissa recounts the fascinating experience of seeing users (webinar attendees) interactive with eWebinar for the first time and the pressure she felt from her startup finally coming to life.

Tune in and learn how Melissa got their first trial users on board, and how they ended up converting 85% of those users at the first billing date.

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

Melissa and Todd discuss how they established eWebinar's pricing model, focusing on aligning their business strategy with their lifestyle goals and market approach. Melissa shares insights from her past ventures, highlighting her shift towards a product-led strategy to ensure the business supports a hands-off lifestyle, avoiding the demanding nature of sales-led models. Melissa explains why she’s against freemium and opted for free trial instead, and the reason they chose a low cost pricing structure to temper customer expectations about service levels.

They talk about how eWebinar’s automated functionality required a unique pricing model based on the number of active webinars instead of live concurrent attendees, a risk they took as it moved away from traditional webinar software business models. This resulted in challenges and difficulty in explaining their model to prospective customers unfamiliar with automated webinars. Melissa and Todd reflect on the importance of pricing in shaping customer relationships and the need for ongoing adjustments based on usage and user exploitation.

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

When Melissa first went to Todd with the idea of eWebinar, he wasn't immediately convinced the product was solving a much needed problem. She engaged him as a contractor to write the first version of the website which started with competitive research. During that process, he grew passionate about the idea because he identified a gap in the market for a product that could offer a superior automated webinar experience.

On this episode, Todd describes the process he went through in doing market research and how he came up with the set of launch features. Melissa and Todd also discuss how they strategically cut things down to speed up their launch date, otherwise they would've been stuck in a perpetual rabbit hole of never-ending development.

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

David, eWebinar's CTO and Cofounder, floated around for 2 years as a fractional CTO before joining the company. Previous to that, he was the cofounder for a New York telecomm startup that raised $10m, but shut down after they failed to find enough traction after 4 years to continue raising capital.

Melissa shares David's story and what his mindset was after quitting Microsoft for startup life, and how his beliefs shifted away from gunning for "all or nothing" to "how do I not end up with nothing?"

On this episode, Melissa talks about what founders should know when they're pitching an experienced CTO who has an abundance of options, what a top 1% CTO/Cofounder looks like, and how to navigate equity split when they decide to join your team.

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to have a cofounder to start a company. But, that may work for or against you if you're a business cofounder, depending on whether or not you have the technical chops (or lead on your side) to manage a development team.

After two previous startups, Melissa was sick of (not doing a good job) managing engineers and thought she could start eWebinar by hiring a dev shop to build their v1 before outsourcing to a team in Vietnam.

That experience was a disaster, but it led her to her now cofounder and CTO, David, who's also her life partner.

Melissa shares her perspective on what a great founding team looks like and how to go about convincing people to join you before there's even a product.

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

People think bootstrapping is a financial decision, when it's really a lifestyle choice.  Read that again.

In this episode, Melissa talks about the reasons behind choosing to build eWebinar as a lifestyle company and how that shapes every decision they make from how they operate, to who they hire, to company culture.

Melissa and Todd discuss the benefits of bootstrapping over venture capital, what it means to run a bootstrapped company, and misconceptions about bootstrapping which include things like: they raise zero capital, founders don't want to give away equity, they have smaller exits...

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

Melissa founded eWebinar two months after her last startup (real estate SaaS software) was acquired. This episode is the origin story of eWebinar: how she finally settled on eWebinar vs all the other ideas she had, and why she was determined to bootstrap this startup over raising venture capital.

Melissa talks about the importance of choosing an idea/product that makes you happy over what you have experience in and why the traditional model of building a career on top of your education is counter-intuitive.

Todd (co-host and COO of eWebinar) tells his story of working with startups that never took off, and why he still decided to take a chance in eWebinar from day one, long before there was a product. He shares insights around what it takes to recruit your first hire who is an experienced, high-paying, seasoned executive.

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

Hey there! It's Melissa, and I'm  the Cofounder and CEO of eWebinar. At the time of this recording, we’d just crossed $1m ARR, 36 months after product launch.

In the last 1.5 years posting on LinkedIn about my experiences bootstrapping three startups, I noticed that the stories that get the most engagement are the ones that gave people a window into the reality of what it’s like to build a startup with very few resources. The feedback I’ve gotten has been about how relatable it was to hear from a non-unicorn founder.

That got me thinking: There isn’t much original content that dives into a day in the life of an average, non-venture backed founder. That’s why I decided to switch things up. 

This season, rather than focus on the experience of others by interviewing them like in Season One, I want to tell you what it was actually like for us to bootstrap a startup to $1m in 36 months.

On each episode, my co-host (Todd Parmley, our COO) and I will go in-depth into one major aspect of our journey. We'll share war stories, mistakes, and lessons learned. 

Todd was a customer of mine in my last startup, and the first person I went to when I decided to start eWebinar. He’s just as much of a cofounder as my CTO/cofounder who joined me a year into this venture - but we’ll get into that in the later episodes.

You’ll be getting two different perspectives: one from a founder and the other from the first person to join a startup.

So then, what can you expect from this season? We’ll talk about things ranging from how we put together an all-star team with limited capital to the best and worst investments we made in our business to key pricing decisions that turned out to be costly mistakes. You’ll hear horror stories like how users figured out loopholes to misuse our free trial, costing us $8000 in 10 days, and success stories like how we ended up owning our SEO strategy having zero experience in digital marketing, which now makes up over 50% of our demo traffic.

Though our story won’t always be pretty, we hope it will be insightful. Our goal is to demystify bootstrapping by sharing our experience of it, and tell you what it’s really like to figure things out as you go, so that A) You’ll know you’re not alone in the struggle and B) Maybe you can find some of the inspiration you need to forge your own success.

If these topics resonate with you, subscribe to ProfitLed on your favorite podcast app to get notified of new episodes and also join our mailing list by going to profitled.fm. 

P.S. I promise to only share things you’ll actually care about.

If there are particular topics you want us to get into this season, let me know by connecting with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you.

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

In this last episode of Season One, Lloyed Lobo, Cofounder of Boast.AI and Traction shares:

• Why he took investment after bootstrapping to 8-figure ARR
• Difference between venture capital, growth capital, and private equity
• What drove him to depression after cashing out and how he got out of it

Traction is a global community of more than 100k entrepreneurs and innovators. Traction Conference has consistently been ranked one of the top 9 marketing conferences in North America by Inc.com, Forbes and Huffington Post.

ProfitLed host, Melissa Kwan and Lloyed also discusses:

• Why is chasing money as a form of success bad?
• How value alignment with life and work enhances both?
• How founders can find out whether their values align with VCs/funders?

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

In this episode, Thomas Vervik, Founder of seniordev.com shares:

• The benefits of working with dev shops
• How agencies recruit high quality talent and retain them
• What it costs to hire senior devs

SeniorDev is a software development shop based in Norway with an office in Ukraine.

ProfitLed host, Melissa Kwan and Thomas also discusses:

• Why wouldn't you just hire direct?
• What is the process of interviewing for great developers?
• What should companies know before building an outsourced team?

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:

Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.