SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Adam Baker is a 3 time founder currently building DealPad. The firm did $3,700,000 in sales last year without outside funding. Can they hit $7m in ARR before Dec 2024?

Gilles Domartini bootstrapped Cleeng to $18m in revenues by focusing on 9 tactics many ignore. His 5 part pricing strategy is new. His organizational efficiency is not-common. Customers use his tool to process 48 million transactions per day adding up to $500m in annual gross billings across 35m user accounts. Will he hit $25m revenue before December 2024?

Lemlist has bootstrapped to $23m in ARR using a combination of Product Virality, Acquisitions, and Courses. Chief Product Officer Kévin Moenne-Loccoz tells us how they stacked growth tactics to avoid raising outside capital while still growing revenue fast. Will they hit $30m by December 2024?

Rytis Lauris bootstrapped OmniSend to $50,000,000 in revenues. His top growth driver? SEO. Learn how he made his first SEO hire, how he structured his SEO team, and how much traffic this team drives the business today. Will he hit $70m ARR before Dec this year?

mFiles has grown from $10m revenues in 2015 to more than $123m today. CFO Justin Kim has been there for the full ride. Is forecasting a waste? How should a CFO setup a plan B? How should scenario analysis actually work?

Typeform CEO Kim Lecha is in a war with Jotform, Surveymonkey, and other form providers. His 2024 top priority is a brand new marketing approach. Will it work? Will Typeform break $180m in ARR before Dec 2024?

Crossbeam CEO Bob Moore invented the term Ecosystem Led Growth. He sold his first company for $60m before taking those lessons and launching CrossBeam. Will he hit $50m in ARR before Dec 2024?

Coro CEO Drew Liwer shares breaking news. He credits their revenue growth to a channel first strategy. Listen to get his playbook. Will they hit $150m in ARR before Dec 2024?

Cledara Co-Founder Brad Leeuwen wanted to grow faster. He was nervous to change pricing. Once he did, the results shocked even him. Will they break $30m in ARR this year?

How did they get Mark Cuban to invest early on? What pricing changes did they make to grow from $40m to $80m in ARR? How did Ross acquire 4+ companies? Will they break $150m in ARR by Dec 2024?

TimeDoctor CEO Liam Martin has used his community to bootstrap his SaaS to $20m. He'll show you how he grew 202% in 2020 and continues to grow profitably. Can they hit $25m by Dec 2024?

Metadata CEO Gil Allouche almost killed his company in April 2020 when he only had $500k cash left in the bank and less than 2 months of runway. He used 4 growth tactics to turn things around, hitting $15m in ARR last week. Can he break $20m before Dec 2024?

Founder of Brightedge Jim Yu teaches us the 3 weekly candences he ran to hit $20m, how he set up his org chart from $20m to $100m, and 3 non-standard metrics he tracks. Will they break $150m ARR this year?

Eugene Levin joined SEMRush at $3m ARR after the founders wouldn't let him invest. As president, he's grown the business to 100,000 paying customers 850k free users, $2,500 ACV and 25% YoY revenue growth. Will they break $350m ARR this year?

Adam Robinson had a 6 person team doing $10m in ARR. Then he went all in on linkedin, pivoted to B2B, and broke $20m in ARR. He did $1,858,399 MRR in Jan 2024 and profited $509,984. Can he break $5m in profits this year?

Jason Cohen founded WPEngine in 2010 and broke $20m within 4 years. Today, the company does $400m+ in Revenues. In this podcast Cohen teaches 9 rules he used to change his org chart, optimize roles, and replace himself as CEO as he scaled. Will they break $500m revenue this year?

Ryan Allis launched iContact when he was 18. He made $15m cash when he exited in 2011 for $169m. He shares his negotiation with Salesforce Marc Benioff, how he found 10 profitable acquisition channels, 70,000 customers, and broke $50m in revenues. Will he buy it back for $1 one day?

LMS365 raised $20m in 2023 at a $100m valuation - a 5x multiple on $20m of ARR. As of April 2024, they do $30m in ARR. Their 200 person team is focused on building software for the Microsoft ecosystem. Can they hit $40m ARR this year?

They hit $3m ARR fast using MTU tiers on their pricing page. Raised $7m in 2023 at a $35m post money valuation and are burning $30k per month today. Focus is profitability before Q2 2025, will they hit it?

Rural mom and pop shops love him. 13,000 have purchased his POS and software system processing over $1.85 billion in GMV in 2023 across 35m transactions. Can he crack $2b GMV in 2024?

Companies like Samsung are sourcing college talent using Scholarship Owl. The firm hit $6m in 2023 revenue, bootstrapped. 150,000 college students join the platform monthly increasing the size and quality of the talent pool the company's B2B customers can pay to access. Can he hit $10m this year?

CEO Alex Shvarts shared a default rate of 15%, charge off rate of 6.8%, along with significant expenses related to acquisition costs, and interest expenses. The firm is targeting $300m in capital deployed in 2024. If it hits its target, does this FinTech SMB factoring company have enough margin to survive long term?

Reveeler grew ARR 100% from $25m to $51m in 2023 and took $5m to the bottom line as profits. What interest rate do they pay Hercules on their new $65m debt facility for acquisitions? How does CEO Jay Ackerman plan to hit $100m in revenue this year (2024)? Who will they acquire next?

20 year old wins $3m playing poker, launches SaaS. He raised $18.2m. After 7 years and dilution down to under 50% he left to launch his new bootstrapped company. Whippy helps lawyers run their operations and hit $4m ARR this month. Can he hit $10m bootstrapped?

CEO Griff Parry launched m3ter in 2020 after selling his first company Gamesparks to AWS. Today 10-100 customers pay him platform fee's and usage fee's to use his usage based billing API tool. He doesn't code but across his team of 56, more than 25 are engineers. Can they scale into their last round valuation?

Launched in 2016 selling software to Music Repair Shops, TudoDesk exited for $1m+. This is the low stress, high wealth way to build a software company. TC won't write about you, but it doesn't matter, you'll get wealthy fast!

Launched in 2016, CEO Matt Prados got rich off dividends and profits. He's bootstrapped to $20m in revenue with plans to hit $32m in 2024. Can he do it? His outbound call center strategy might get him there.

Tarja recognizes that energy in Finland is a hot space. She's launched a marketplace connecting 100 apartment complex owners with 100 providers of energy services like solar and heat. Shes raising a $15m fund to then back these projects that go through her marketplace. Will she get the $15m SPV closed and change the course of energy efficiency before 2025?

Matt Britton sold his agency for $50m in 2010 then launched Suzy.com in 2011. The original version, Crowdtap, was a mobile app where consumers could test new enterprise products like candy bars, detergents, and other items. The firm struggled and then doubled down on Enterprises paying for user research through its software, hitting $10m Revenue in 2018. Last year the firm did $65m in revenue and burned $12m. Britton says "We'll hit $82m revenue this year and plan to burn $9m with a track to $100m ARR by mid 2025." Will he get there?

Despite large competitors like CloudBooking, Guesty, and other hotel management platforms, RoomChecking CEO Jonathan Weizman has carved out a $2m niche. He specifically helps hotel owners in France organize cleaning schedules by hotel cleaners as guests check out.

He turned down $20m in 2021 for his Slack competitor, Chanty.com. Today, the company has over 24,000 paying customers and does $3m revenue, profiting $1.2m in 2023. The company is fully bootstrapped. Can he find a sales co-founder willing to hustle hard for 15% equity?

He raised $16.9m and hit $40m in revenue. Success? Wrong. He shut his unprofitable grocery delivery company down in 2021 then spent a year working with liquidators. Today, he's moved industries to the Dev Ops space and launched his disaster recovery SaaS Bennudata.com.

His first company grew to a few million in revenue before exiting in 2021. After a 2 year earn-out, he left to build a new company. When his Customer Health Tracking excel template went viral on linkedin, he capitalized and launched his SaaS. The post led to 6 customers paying $500/mo for his revenue operations platform, Revos.ai

After Tiger gave the founders $7m in a 2021 secondary at a $625m valuation, they took their team to Morocco for a team retreat. Seeing a weak market, they chose to cut the team from 225 down to 150 and become profitable. Despite these cuts, they've doubled revenue by selling 5 key product lines to sales teams. Will they do $50m in revenue in 2024? Chilipiper.com

His 13 person sales team does 2,000 calls per month. This engine has landed him 4,100 customers who pay him to help plan their field sales reps driving routes to save gas and make more money. He's bootstrapped the company to $6m and made a full recovery from COVID down year 2021. He's used debt to scale to keep 100% equity. Will he get the exit he dreams of in 2024 and reap the rewards of bootstrapping and keeping equity? Badgermapping.com

300,000 homeowners cut their lawns every month with Greenpal who connects them to 35,000 lawn care companies. In 2023, the company did $30m in total lawn cuts and kept 15% of that revenue to generate $4.5m in revenue. They do this all with 0 FTE's. Why? Bryan wanted freedom. He wanted to travel 11 months of the year while building a company he loved. VC wasn't an option. Listen in if you're looking to build a business and life you love with no external pressure. Yourgreenpal.com