A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders He Bootstrapped to $55M in Revenue—without ever having to hit 100% YoY growth. | Stéphan Donzé, Founder of AODocs
Aug 28, 2025
Stéphan Donzé, the founder of AODocs, shares his journey of bootstrapping a document management solution for enterprises, raking in $55M without VC funding. He discusses the benefits of steady growth over hypergrowth and why it’s essential for founders to personally close their first deals. Stéphan reveals the brutal realities of enterprise sales, including long sales cycles and the need for strong customer relationships. He also explains how being European gave him an edge against U.S. competitors in the tech world.
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Scarcity Forces Better Choices
- Bootstrapped companies trade visibility for discipline and careful spending.
- Scarcity forces better engineering and investment choices and pays off in downturns when profitable firms attract talent.
Use Services To Discover Products
- Use a services business as an observation point to spot product opportunities with low risk.
- Services generate cash and give customer intimacy to identify repeatable product ideas.
Document Control Is About Long-Term Guarantees
- Business-critical document management requires long-term traceability and process guarantees.
- Customers need database-grade versioning, assignment, and auditability spanning decades.