In season 2 of Automate, Delegate, Eliminate we are paying homage to all those SaaS out there that make those 3 things possible! Our first guest is David Smith of Gravity Forms!

David Smith is the Community Lead at RocketGenius and was the company’s first hire. David has been a Gravity Forms developer for over 10 years and has published hundreds of Gravity Forms resources on his blog, GravityWiz.com. He enjoys short walks, preferably NOT on beaches.

For those who haven’t heard of Gravity Forms, tell us a bit about it, what does it do?

• Gravity Forms is the premier Wordpress form builder available for Wordpress
• It can build pretty much any online form that you need for Wordpress, from payment collection forms to data forms for automation via a service like Zapier.
• It helps with data collection, data management, and data usage.

Who were the founders of Gravity Forms?

• Carl, Alex, and Kevin.
• Aka The Brains, The  Brawn, and The Beauty. Each founder has a unique personality and ability that they bring to the business.
• The name of the company, RocketGenius, came from a slip of the tongue from one of the founders.

What gave them the idea to start their company?

• All 3 founders were working for another company, all 3 were entrepreneurs. Carl (the Brains), had the idea to start a travel site together, Tiki Go.
• They couldn’t get the site to fully take off and decided they needed to leave their full-time jobs to make their new business a reality.
• When they decided to abandon Tiki Go and quit their day jobs they didn’t actually have a plan for what would come next. 

What led them to create a form builder?

• Kevin was already doing freelance web development at the time, using Wordpress a lot, and one of the consistent pain points he ran into was forms. At the time getting the data from the site to its ultimate endpoint didn’t have a good solution. 
• Alex had just built 2 form builders, and all 3 founders had built a form builder at their previous job. 
• This was their Aha! Moment as to what RocketGenius needed to make. 
• One of the legends of Gravity Forms was that the founders gave Alex a task to learn PHP, and he came back the next day and broke ground on Gravity Forms. 

What did they do to prepare for the launch?

• They attended the biggest Worpress conference of the time, WordCamp Chicago.
• Carl and Kevin throw Alex, the shy guy, into a t-shirt that says “Ask Me about Gravity Forms”. 
• They did a lot of networking with the Wordpress community.

What sets Gravity Forms apart from competitors?

• Ease of use, the drag and drop abilities. 
• They were one of the first premium plug-ins.
• User support.

What was the growth of the company like?

• The revenue grew much faster than the employee base.
• They wanted to keep the culture of the smaller company for as long as possible. 
• They are currently at 25 employees, with a few contractors as well.
• They have over 2 million active installs.
• Up to 56 first-party add-ons
• Over 300 third party add-ons

What would you have done differently?

• They would not have resisted hiring more employees

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?

• Never be afraid to lose your company culture through growth, embrace the growth of the company. Learn how to properly delegate.
• Stay focused on your key project, even if another seems more interesting at the time.
• Commit to quality

Resources:

Websites: 

Gravity Forms

Data Automation

Books mentioned: 

The Lean Startup

Leadership and Self Deception

The Anatomy of Peace

Suggest a SaaS founder for the Automate, Delegate, Eliminate show at:

[email protected]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.