Practical Founders Podcast
Episodes
#90: Why Growth Equity is Practical Funding for Founders Who Are Scaling Up Efficiently – Phil Dur
19 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Phil Dur is cofounder and managing partner of PeakSpan Capital, a growth equity investment firm that works with bootstrapped SaaS founders who a...
#89: Scrappy Bootstrappers Grew Up to Be the Enterprise Leader in Their Market - Joe McMenemon
12 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Joe McMenemon and his college roommate, Brendan, knew they wanted to start a business together. They had run their college fraternity chapter and saw ...
#88: Persevered to Find a Scalable Niche in a Crowded Software Market – Jeromy Wilson
05 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jeromy Wilson spent over ten years in the software business as a product management leader working for PE-owned and VC-funded software companies...
#87: Created Software for Their Own Business that is Now Changing the Industry – Paul Van Metre
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Van Metre was the co-founder of a successful machine shop that manufactured custom parts for the aerospace and medical device industries. Over 15...
#86: Growing Profitably and Getting Big with Happy Founders After 18 Years – Chris Savage
22 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Savage is the co-founder of Wistia, a leading video marketing platform for businesses. Wistia was started in 2007 by Chris and a college friend...
#85: Moz Founder Rand Fishkin Reveals the Pains of VC Funding and an Alternative Funding Approach
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rand Fishkin is the founder and former CEO of Moz, a leading SEO software for marketers created in 2007 that grew out of the active followers of Rand...
#84: Scaled and Sold a Marketplace of Pre-Vetted Freelancers – Nathan Hirsch
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nathan Hirsch, co-founder of FreeUp, shares his journey of building and selling the company and his other business adventures. FreeUp provides client...
#83: Second-time founder grows Amazon affiliate marketing platform to $3M ARR in one year – Ian Brodie
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Brodie, the co-founder and CEO of Levanta, shares his journey of building a successful SaaS company in the affiliate marketing space. Levanta is ...
#82: Former SaaS Founder Launches Seed Fund for Capital-Efficient Growers in Phoenix – Gregg Scoresby
16 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gregg Scoresby founded CampusLogic in Phoenix in 2021 to provide software for colleges and universities in the US to make it easier for students to ap...
#81: Bootstrapped Founder Sells His Profitable SaaS Company with $4 Million ARR – Esben Friis-Jensen
09 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Esben Friis-Jensen and his cofounder, Sebastian Seilund, teamed up in 2021 to create Userflow, a no-code user onboarding product for SaaS companies. ...
#80: Second-Time Founder Wins Bigger with Bootstrapped SaaS Company – Antony Ceravolo
02 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Antony Ceravolo is a successful two-time startup founder from Adelaide, South Australia. He started his career in investment banking but left in 2002 ...
#79: Practical Founder with 3 Exits Explains How SEO Can Drive Efficient Growth – Raj Khera
26 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Raj Khera is an experienced practical SaaS founder who has used search engine optimization (SEO) to grow businesses very efficiently. Now he coaches...
#78: Fast-Growing K-12 Education Software Company Will Be Profitable This Year – Justin Hewett
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Hewett started in the software business as a territory sales manager for an education software company in Utah. The company grew and Justin eve...
#77: Bootstrapped and Winning in Season Ticket Management Software – Morgan Katz
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Morgan Katz is the founder and CEO of Ticketnology. Morgan was an enthusiastic athlete with a degree in sports management who started her career in t...
#76: Real Estate Investor Built Her Own CRM Solution and Created a Market Leader – Stephanie Betters
29 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Stephanie Betters was a practicing Nurse Practitioner in heart surgery and an active real estate investor when her frustration with disparate real est...
#75: Bootstrapped Their Digital Health Platform to Global Scale with 200 Employees – Shameem Hameed
22 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Shameem Hameed created several companies, including a medical billing services company, before starting ZH Healthcare in 2008 to provide billing and E...
#74: Practical Holding Company Acquires Profitable SaaS Companies – Kevin McArdle
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin McArdle spent 15 years working in large software companies before becoming a practical investor and acquirer of smaller SaaS businesses. Kevin i...
#73: Bootstrapped to successful $67 million exit with medical billing solutions – Harry Hopkins
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Harry Hopkins is co-founder and CIO of Viewgol, a medical billing technology software and services company based in Dallas, Texas. Viewgol was ...
#72: Serial entrepreneur funded his biggest idea yet from other businesses – Hamed Mazrouei
01 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hamed Mazrouie owned a security monitoring business and other businesses for many years before he started his first software and services business cal...
#71: Bootstrapped the core software that runs complex manufacturing plants – Subramanyam Kasibhat
24 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Subramanyam Kasibhat has created dozens of products in many different industries. He and his wife were contracted by a friend to build a software solu...
#70: Bootstrapped to $3M and Raised a VC Round Before a $200M PE Transaction – Jafar Owainati
17 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jafar Owainati was a mechanical engineer before he got an MBA in entrepreneurship and decided to start a software company with two friends. They looke...
#69: Bootstrapped a Fintech Payments Platform to $10M ARR in 3 Years – Miles Schwartz
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Miles Schwartz a cofounder of Zūm Rails, a fast-growing fintech based in Canada with a growing worldwide presence. In just 3.5 years and without any...
#68: Bootstrapped and Sold a Successful Startup in Latin America – Bernardo Carvalho Wertheim
03 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bernardo Carvalho Wertheim is a worldly entrepreneur who grew up in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and then moved to the UK to go to school and start his career i...
#67: Grew and Sold a Profitable Healthcare Software Company – Patrick Randolph
27 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Patrick Randolph discovered that doctors' offices lose 20% of appointments due to patient cancellations and no-shows, he set out to design and te...
#66: Serial SaaS Founder Had Three Successful Exits in Three Different Ways – Raj Khera
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Raj Khera has had three exits as a software entrepreneur and leader in his long career. His first company, GovCon, grew in the late 1990s to help gove...
#65: The Bootstrapped Rocket-Ride Success Story of HighLevel – Robin Alex
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robin Alex worked in a digital marketing agency in Dallas when he discovered their small business clients struggled to nurture and follow up with thei...
#64: Bootstrapped, very profitable and still having fun after 18 years – Mike Roberts
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mike Roberts is the founder and CEO of SpyFu, a leading competitive research tool for marketers and entrepreneurs with over 15,000 paid customers and ...
#63: Successfully Scaling Up a Bootstrapped Vertical SaaS Business – Raution Jaiswal
29 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Raution Jaiswal grew up in India and then worked in management roles at large companies in the US before he discovered a problem experienced by small ...
#62: She Quit Her CPA Job to Create This Fast-Growing SaaS Startup – Kelly Mann
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kelly Mann was a CPA and auditor for 15 years before leaving her employer to start her own CPA firm focused on 401K benefits audits. She discovered a ...
#61: Sold His Bootstrapped SaaS Company for 16X Revenues - Praveen Ghanta
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Praveen Ghanta graduated from MIT with computer science and economics degrees and worked for various financial services companies after trying his han...
#60: Created a Practical Venture Studio After Selling His SaaS Company – Oliver Low
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver Low worked for Microsoft and then MySpace in London before creating a successful digital agency in 2010 with two friends. Their agency g...
#59: Using Royalty-Based Financing for Non-Dilutive SaaS Funding – Vik Thapar
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this expert interview, Vik Thapar of Cypress Growth Capital explains revenue-based financing (RBF) and how it can be very useful for practical Sa...
#58: Bootstrapped a successful lawncare services marketplace – Bryan Clayton
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bryan Clayton is the co-founder and CEO of Greenpal, a leading on-demand marketplace of lawn care services for homeowners across the US. With a team ...
#57: Finance, Accounting, and SaaS Metrics Basics for Practical Founders - Ben Murray
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Murray is a former SaaS CFO and finance professional who helps SaaS founders understand the basics of SaaS accounting, finance, and metrics for th...
#56: Technical founder shares deep learnings from his many startups – Wissam Tabbara
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wissam Tabbara is a serial entrepreneur who has created multiple software startups in Seattle since 2009 when he left Microsoft where he was a softwar...
#55: Bootstrapped to $10M ARR with community-led growth and services – Lloyed Lobo
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lloyed Lobo is the co-founder and former president of Boast.ai, a leading platform to help software companies in the US and Canada to redeem availabl...
#54: Wound down a bootstrapped $1M SaaS startup when the market changed – Ryan Goodman
22 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ryan Goodman joined the startup in the early days of the business intelligence and analytics market in 2003 as a specialist helping large customers ad...
#53: Insights and lessons from the first year of the Practical Founders Podcast – Greg Head
14 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As the host of the Practical Founders Podcast, I have interviewed 46 successful SaaS founders and 6 savvy experts in the first year of weekly episodes...
#52: Successful roofing contractor creates fast-growing $20M vertical SaaS business – Patrick Fingles
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick Fingles grew a successful roofing company with hundreds of employees in the Baltimore-Washington DC area. In 2013, they created their own soft...
#51: Scaling his bootstrapped SaaS company with happy founders and happy employees – Jordan Fleming
23 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jordan Fleming grew up in Toronto and New York, then lived in Edinburgh, Scotland for 15 years where he created a successful consultancy helping large...
#50: Serial bootstrapper sold two companies to eBay and won very big – Gregory Shepard
16 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gregory Shepard is a serial entrepreneur who has created and sold 12 companies, including marketing software and ad technology companies. In 2016, he ...
#49: Practical investor explains the growth equity funding game - Deepak Sindwani
09 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Deepak Sindwani is a former software entrepreneur who has been a professional investor in software companies for over 20 years. Deepak is the co-found...
#48 – Built, grew, sold, and kept growing a construction software company – Sam Knight
02 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Knight is the co-founder and former president of BOLT Software, a project management and scheduling software for the construction trades that buil...
#47 – How to win big when selling your SaaS company for under $50 million – Chris Kern
26 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Kern is an expert independent M&A advisor who has helped over 150 growing tech companies get financing, obtain investment, or sell their ...
#46 – Founding couple creates valuable company, big exit, and family life too
19 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua Strebel started a small SEO and website agency in the early 2000s after graduating from university. Joshua and his wife Sally experimented with...
#45 – Bootstrapped founder still creating big industry impact 30 years in – Dave Savage
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Savage was a top-producing mortgage loan officer in the early 1990s who used computers and software to help him sell more. He became a software e...
#44 – Helping seniors tell their stories and fight loneliness with easy apps – Beth Sanders
05 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Beth Sanders was selling computer software and equipment for a regional computer retailer in Ohio when she recorded her grandmother's life stories on...
#43 – A tenacious bootstrapper's journey to a profitable and sustainable SaaS business
28 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Haynam grew up in the Central Valley of California just 100 miles from the tech center of Silicon Valley--without any awareness of tech jobs or t...
#42: Second-time founder scaling up with product-led growth and 3 employees
21 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Esben Friis-Jensen was a technology professional in Copenhagen, Denmark before he and three Danish friends moved to San Francisco in 2013 to start a n...
#41: A Product Feature Experiment Turns into a Valuable Standalone SaaS Company – Massimo Arrigoni
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Massimo Arrigoni grew up in Milan, Italy, and moved to California 27 years ago to create software products and start a family, eventually moving to th...
#40: How SaaS Startups Can Grow Sales Successfully With SDRs and BDRs - Christine Rogers
07 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"My B2B SaaS startup needs just more warm leads. But we have struggled when we hire junior salespeople to call on and email cold prospects to generate...
#39: Former VC and funded CEO helps founders grow lasting companies without VC funding – Dave Whorton
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Whorton is an experienced tech investor and funded founder who spent the first 20 years of his career at the highest levels of Silicon Valley ven...
#38: Spinout SaaS platform for real estate brokerages reaches $50 million – York Baur
24 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Windermere Real Estate is a large and well-known residential real estate broker in the Seattle area. In the late 1990s, they invested to build an inte...
#37: Bootstrapped for 10 years and sold ProfitWell for $200 million – Patrick Campbell
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick Campbell wasn't expecting to be an entrepreneur when he grew up, but after his first few jobs, he struck out on his own in 2012 to create a so...
#36: His first company had big VC funding, but not his second software company – Jon Nordmark
10 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jon Nordmark founded eBags.com in 1998 as one of the first Internet e-commerce companies and grew it into the largest online retailer of lugga...
#35: From website designer to industry SaaS platform to a successful acquisition – Perry Rosenbloom
03 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Perry Rosenbloom moved to Boulder, Colorado in 2011 and started a small business offering digital marketing and custom website services. After buildin...
#34: Sold his tech services company to invest in big vision for his BI analytics products – Gopal Krishnamurthy
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gopal Krishnamurthy was an early BI and data analytics expert working for a large company when he left to start a BI consulting company called Visual ...
#33: Bootstrapped a leading CRM for auto dealers that sold for $150 million – Matt Watson
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Watson was a two-time software company with two successful exits before he was 40 years old. He started his first company, VinSolutions, in his ...
#32: From her kitchen table to global HR employee relations SaaS leader – Deb Muller
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Deb Muller was an experienced HR executive at a large global company who left her job to start a consultancy specializing in managing important employ...
#31: Bootstrapped to $30 million and still growing their survey tool and research platform - Vivek Bhaskaran
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Vivek Bhaskaran was a computer science student in college who worked on an online survey tool for a professor in the marketing department. After schoo...
#30: Bootstrapped IT mgt. software to over $10 million in annual sales before being acquired - Scott McCausland
27 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Scott McCausland was an experienced software sales leader who decided to go out on his own in 2008 to build a new software business. His technical cof...
#29: Mobile app developer created a software platform to grow faster – Oliver Palmer
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver Palmer helped start a mobile app development agency in Sydney, Australia that built simple apps for early mobile phones. When the iPhone launch...
#28: Bootstrapped B2B SaaS company in India serving IT services companies – Sandeep Kumar
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sandeep Kumar quit his job working for an Indian consulting company to start a software company in 2005 when product-focused startups were not common ...
#27: Bootstrapped to over $3M ARR with software for SaaS product managers – Sarah Hum
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Hum studied graphic design at university before she discovered she loved to help software startups create new products. She moved to Silicon Val...
#26: His SaaS business is scaling fast by helping other businesses to grow – Mark Abbott
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Abbott was an active investor and board member for 20 years when he realized that most of the 100+ companies he helped were not good a their "bus...
#25: Bootstrapped a global SaaS business in Scotland for a "massive niche" market
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Craig Letton quit his corporate sales job in 2011 to take over his parents' small printing business in Scotland. It was his first time running a busin...
#24: Bootstrapped event registration platform for triathlons and running races – Jeff Matlow
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff Matlow is a serial entrepreneur and a crazy triathlete and a long-distance runner who found a way to put those passions together in a software st...
#23: Creating massive impact with a specialized school fundraising platform – Howard Gottlieb
02 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Howard Gottlieb created and sold several businesses before starting a school fundraising website in 2003 called Easy Fundraising Ideas. It grew into t...
#22: Grew a niche vertical startup into a global industry leader – Scott Pickard
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Pickard didn't know he was embarking on a 15-year software entrepreneurial journey when he signed on to manage a horse veterinary practice in Ca...
#21: Bootstrapped in Australia then moved to the US to grow much bigger – Josh Cameron
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Cameron and three university friends started a scrappy software company in Brisbane Australia just after graduating. They had run the popular col...
#20: Grew on-demand marketplace out of a search marketing agency – Joe Griffin
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Joe Griffin recently left his job of 8 years as co-CEO of ClearVoice, a company that he and co-founder Jay Swanson started in 2014 out of their digita...
#19: Practical VC seed investor explains the institutional funding game – John Francis
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
John Francis is a general partner at Stout Street Capital, a venture capital fund based in Denver, Colorado. Stout Street has made 70 small s...
#18: Bootstrapped a podcast recording platform to scale in Silicon Valley - Zach Moreno
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Zach Moreno was a full-stack developer and coding instructor in Northern California in 2015 when he discovered audio podcasts. There wasn't a remote p...
#17: Creatively grew and sold a threat intelligence product with practical funding - Karl Swannie
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Swannie was a geographer working in the scenic city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, when he started analyzing social media data based on l...
#16: Growing from scrappy startup founder to scaling-up SaaS CEO - Brad Redding
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Brad Redding calls his first startup a "successful failure." It didn't end well, but he learned several very important lessons that helped him be more...
#15: Scrappy startup founder changes the way cars are bought online - Daniel Yuabov
30 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Yuabov was a 22-year-old IT manager in New York who wanted to buy a new car. He was so frustrated with the buying experience that he started a ...
#14: Created her second software company around her world-traveling life - Melissa Kwan
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Melissa Kwan created her first software company in 2014 and then sold it in 2019. It was extremely difficult to start and even harder to grow, but it'...
#13: Founder with 2 exits shares how he achieved real product-market fit twice - Seth Radman
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Seth Radman created, grew, and sold two music app startups in his twenties. A saxophone player in his college marching band, Seth was passionate about...
#12: Practical investor provides savvy help for vertical SaaS founders – Dougal Cameron
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dougal Cameron created Golden Section to provide support and practical funding to SaaS founders with deep experience in select vertical markets. Their...
#11 - Bootstrapped to exit in 6 years against funded competitors - Sean Meister
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sean Meister was a sales professional and leader with a successful career selling hospital and medical supplies before he left to join his long-time f...
#10: From scrappy software entrepreneur to savvy SaaS CEO - Thomas Brown
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Brown creatively bootstrapped his software company and ran it as a very small "lifestyle" business before committing to growing his SaaS busine...
#9: Bootstrapper gets practical funding before getting acquired for $22 million - Nick Santora
19 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Santora bootstrapped Curricula for 4 years with his co-founders before raising $3M in practical funding and then getting acquired in 2022 for $22...
#8: Bootstrapped to $100M exit with just one employee - Jeremy Clarke
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Clarke created, grew, and sold his software company in a most unusual and successful way: He grew WebMerge to $4M revenue by just himself in 6 ...
#7: From consulting biz to serious SaaS exit in Silicon Valley - Luke Hohmann
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Luke Hohmann was an engineering and product management leader at Silicon Valley startups before he became an acclaimed author and speaker in the enter...
#6: Self-funded 3rd venture to a big exit in 18 months - Steve Gelley
29 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Gelley created two successful businesses and learned important lessons before he and a cofounder self-funded a third startup that was acquired i...
#5: Lessons and successes building products for developers – Hamid Shojaee of Axosoft
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hamid Shojaee is a technical founder and serial entrepreneur who created several software companies and dozens of products in the last 25 years. He s...
#4: Winning the vertical software game with steady growth - Dan Jaffe of LawLytics
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Jaffe is the founder and CEO of LawLytics, a popular website marketing platform for small law firms. Dan was a practicing lawyer before he became ...
#3: From bootstrapped add-on to white label success - Rafael Zimberoff of ShipRush
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rafael Zimberoff was CEO of ShipRush, a software company he founded in 2001, then grew, and eventually sold in 2017 to Descartes Systems Group for $17...
#2: Bootstrapped to $2 billion valuation in 10 years - Jonathan Cronstedt of Kajabi
26 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Cronstedt, also known as JCron, was the president of Kajabi software from 2016 through 2021 as he helped the company grow past the early star...
#1: Self-funded spinoff to software growth powerhouse - Todd Watson of Showit
19 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Todd Watson is the owner and CEO of Showit, a popular no-code website builder and platform for designers and photographers. Todd is a native of Phoen...