Bootstrapping, payroll choices, and COVID impact

Raju Patel founded eShow over 25 years ago after building a speaker portal for a magazine company and realizing he had a repeatable software product. What began as a one-man shop in suburban Chicago evolved into a robust event-management platform serving associations that needed complex, multi-module functionality. His business grew steadily as he delivered registration, booth management, speaker portals, and onsite systems for demanding event teams.

Today eShow has 125 employees, more than 14 integrated modules, and supports hundreds of events each year for 300+ customers, including large association conferences with tens of thousands of attendees. The company has always been profitable, self-funded, and built through careful reinvestment, steady hiring, and deep product expansion. Raju rebuilt the platform multiple times, including a shift to a modern stack.

Still independent with over $10 million in revenues, Raju is now building a VP-level leadership team, exploring practical growth capital, and planning a hybrid event model that blends in-person and virtual experiences. His story highlights long-term passion, practical growth, and a deliberate shift from hands-on founder to capable CEO after decades in the game.

Key Takeaways

• Deep Domain Focus – Serving the most complex association events created defensible differentiation.
• Slow, Steady Compounding – Year-over-year growth came from incremental improvements, not big bet.
• Passion Over Money – Raju built for love of the work, not an exit, which sustained him through decades of change.
• Multiple Rewrites Needed – Long-term SaaS requires full platform rebuilds, and Raju completed two with a third underway on a modern stack.
• Late-Stage Professionalization – Hiring VPs, defining ICPs, and strengthening leadership came only after passing the $10M threshold.

Quote from Raju Patel, founder of eShow

"Looking back after 20 years running this as a small business in software, think I would have figured out how to pull a little bit more money out. It would have given me a better peace of mind."

"I wouldn't have even known how to spend if I pulled a million out back then, it would have been wasted. I was very frugal and investing in my business every year."

"But now I could figure out how to spend a million dollars, on savings and other personal spending that would be meaningful. It would be liberating. I deserve it, so I'm going to spend a little bit more, not be frugal. I can be frugal in my business and in my personal life not be so frugal!"

Links

• Raju Patel on LinkedIn
• eShow on LinkedIn
• eShow website

This podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io.

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