Jonathan Kazarian built Accelevents to $10 million ARR working nights and weekends for five years while keeping his hedge fund day job. But when COVID hit just as he went full-time, every event worldwide got canceled and revenue dropped to zero – forcing him to borrow $75,000 from his father's retirement to survive.
In this episode, Jonathan reveals the reality of bootstrapping a global platform without quitting your day job. He shares the brutal truth about hiring remote developers (firing 21 Upwork contractors to find one good one), the "19-Second Support" strategy that wins enterprise deals, and how they survived their entire revenue stream vanishing overnight during COVID by pivoting to virtual events.
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🔑 Key Lessons
- ⏰ The 5-Year Grind: Balancing a hedge fund job with a growing SaaS (and why he didn't quit sooner).
- 📉 The COVID Crisis: Losing 100% of revenue in March 2020 and 10X'ing it by December.
- 🛠️ Hiring Mistakes: Why he had to fire 21 remote developers to build a stable product.
- 🍽️ Event-Led Growth: Hosting intimate dinners to close high-value customers without pitching.
- ⚡ 19-Second Support: The customer success metric that beats competitors with bigger budgets.
📖 Chapters
- Introduction & The Charlie Munger Quote
- The Origin Story: A Cancer Fundraiser Event
- The 5-Year Grind: Nights & Weekends
- Hiring Disasters: Going Through 21 Upwork Contractors
- The COVID Crisis: Revenue Going to Zero
- The Pivot: Pre-Selling Virtual Features Before Building Them
- Event-Led Growth: Hosting Dinners to Win Customers
- B2B Sales Strategy & Consolidating Tech Stacks
- The "19-Second" Customer Support Standard
- Advice for Founders on Focus
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