From Metallica to Harvard, Toni Hopponen has quietly built tools used by some of the world’s most iconic brands.

He bootstrapped Flockler, scaled it through pure product-led growth, sold it, and then, instead of retiring, started from zero again.

In this episode of Brilliance Talks, Toni breaks down:

• How he landed global brands with no sales team
• The emotional cost of selling a company after 12 years
• Lessons from rebuilding in the AI era
• Why marketers should start before the product
• The surprising value of early testers (200+ of them)
• What founders consistently get wrong about building in 2025

Shownotes:

01:09 Tony’s journey: Flockler to Landing Rabbit

04:10 Landing Harvard and Metallica

09:49 Selling Flockler: Lessons learned

12:38 Landing Rabbit: The problem it solves

17:32 Demo: AI-powered landing page creation

29:31 Recruiting 200+ early testers

About Tony:

Toni's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonihopponen/

Landing Rabbit: https://landingrabbit.com

Flockler (past company): https://flockler.com

Connect with us:

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LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/simac-konkader