How to Raise Money for a Free Software Development Tool That Has Zero Revenue

Hamid Shojaee is a technical founder and serial entrepreneur who created several software companies and dozens of products in the last 25 years. He sold his two software companies in 2021—Axosoft and Pure Chat—and now is an active investor and has a new startup to keep him busy.

Axosoft was popular project management and bug-tracking software for developers that he bootstrapped to launch in 2002. It grew profitably for years until it met stiff competition despite active efforts to grow. Dozens of product experiments finally produced a hit, the popular software GitKraken.

In this episode, Hamid shares some hard lessons learned:

• How he and his team experimented to test new product ideas and don’t invest until they prove real user traction (DAUs)
• The challenges of raising money from investors who want faster revenue traction too early in the product-led growth cycle
• The challenges of not being the dominant leader in your market in the long-run
• Selling one business to a strategic buyer without help: selling the other business to a financial buyer using M&A investment bankers
• The modest changes in his life after selling two companies for life-changing wealth in 2021
• Why he’s starting and building another software company

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