#31: Bootstrapped to $30 million and still growing their survey tool and research platform - Vivek Bhaskaran

Vivek Bhaskaran was a computer science student in college who worked on an online survey tool for a professor in the marketing department. After school, he built a new survey tool with a fellow software developer while they still held their day jobs. QuestionPro grew slowly and profitably with efficient search engine optimization and viral marketing, avoiding the need to raise any money from outside investors.

QuestionPro grew steadily by expanding the product with more powerful features for larger companies to sell larger deals that required regional enterprise salespeople. They also expanded regionally with offices in US, UK, Germany, Australia, and Latin America. Recently, they have acquired several companies with survey products used by large global companies that added to their customer base.

Vivek talks openly about their key inflection points in their journeys of revenue growth, global expansion, recruiting leadership talent, developing systems and processes, and expanding their product portfolio. QuestionPro has 300 employees with $35 million in revenue. Vivek is enjoying the learning and professional challenges of being the CEO of a software company that is growing to over $100 million in revenues.  

In this episode, Vivek explains:

• How they grew fast and profitably in the early years with successful search marketing with a freemium survey tool product and chat sales support
• How his role changed at important revenue inflection points at $1 million revenue with scrappy founders, then stalling at $4 million, growing to $10 million with an organized team, and now to over $30 million with a global organization with systems and processes
• How they have grown with regional expansion with autonomous sales offices and multiple products including several acquired products
• Why he doesn’t say they are a “US company” as they have fully remote employees around the world with no headquarters
• Why they charge an additional fee to big customers to develop new features that eventually enhance their core products

Find out more at practicalfounders.com.