Stéphan bootstrapped AODocs to $55M in revenue and 250 employees without taking a dime of VC money—while competing directly with venture-backed competitors. Starting as a services company in 2012, he spotted the cloud migration wave early and built document management for enterprises moving to Google Workspace.
In this episode, Stéphan breaks down why doubling every two years beats hypergrowth, how to win enterprise deals with zero funding, and why touching business-critical documents means year-long sales cycles but 10-year retention. This is the anti-Silicon Valley playbook that actually works.
Why You Should Listen:
- Why the founder must personally close every single deal in 0 to 1
- How doubling every 2 years (not every year) creates a more stable business
- The brutal reality of enterprise POCs: doing it for free before getting paid
- Why you can't have both fast customer acquisition and high retention
- How being French/European became an advantage against US competitors
Keywords
AODocs, bootstrapping, Stéphan Donzé, enterprise sales, document management, SaaS, Google Workspace, cloud migration, product market fit, B2B
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:12 Bootstrapping vs VC backed
00:03:44 From services to SaaS
00:19:08 Landing the first customer
00:20:47 Why they turned down VC money
00:25:32 The 997 grind—four days on-site with customers every week
00:35:21 Why you can't have fast sales and high retention
00:40:33 Product-market fit
Send me a message to let me know what you think!
