Practical Founders Podcast

When Patrick Randolph discovered that doctors' offices lose 20% of appointments due to patient cancellations and no-shows, he set out to design and test a solution. QueueDr was created to fill those open slots with patients in the waitlist "queue." With just a little funding and lots of hard work, they began by helping small practices and group practices fill open slots with no human intervention. Eventually, they sold to larger organizations and became profitable as they grew. QueueDR was acquired by Phreesia (PHR: NYSE) in March 2021 for an undisclosed amount.  Topics discussed on this podcast How he prototyped and designed the full product before writing any code The multiple challenges of selling technology to healthcare providers How they started by selling to small offices and eventually sold enterprise deals to large organizations Why he didn't want to raise another round of VC funding after raising $1 million from an investor How he developed the relationship with leaders at the company that eventually acquired QueueDr How he thinks about life after selling his company Learn more at practicalfounders.com.

Raj Khera has had three exits as a software entrepreneur and leader in his long career. His first company, GovCon, grew in the late 1990s to help government contractors easily access new contracts up for bid by the US government. Their advertising and subscription revenues grew quickly, and he sold GovCon in 1999 for $12.5 million.  He bootstrapped one of the first email marketing software businesses in the early 2000s called MailerMailer to help small businesses send emails. Raj and his brother Vik ran this as a profitable small business for many years, giving them an interesting business challenge while not sacrificing time with their families. After running the business for 15 years, Raj sold MailerMailer to a public software company, J2 Global, in 2017. Then Raj joined a struggling VC-funded software company called WealthEngine to help grow sales, create new products and exit. Wealth Engine was successfully sold in late 2020. Raj is now an active advisor to software founders. At MoreBusiness.com, he coaches software founders to efficiently acquire customers using advanced search engine optimization and marketing techniques.  Learn more at practicalfounders.com.

Robin Alex worked in a digital marketing agency in Dallas when he discovered their small business clients struggled to nurture and follow up with their website leads. In 2018, Robin and two developers prototyped a marketing automation and CRM software that could help other agencies solve this problem for their clients. They pitched the product and got a great response. They built their first product and HighLevel grew quickly.  HighLevel grew fast as word of mouth and referrals spread in the agency community. HighLevel is an all-in-one sales and marketing platform for agencies that serve small businesses. With marketing automation, CRM, and payment tools, HighLevel has an innovative “white-label” platform that their agency customers rebrand to deliver custom solutions to their customers.  HighLevel has over 60,000 agency customers, over 3 million small business users, and over 700 remote employees. HighLevel is adding 30-50 employees a month, yet they are still “moving fast and breaking things” to move fast and serve their agency customers. The founders took a practical growth equity round of funding in 2021 from PeakEquity. Learn more at practicalfounders.com.

Mike Roberts is the founder and CEO of SpyFu, a leading competitive research tool for marketers and entrepreneurs with over 15,000 paid customers and hundreds of thousands of free users. SpyFu was launched in 2006 and has been a profitable and bootstrapped business for almost 18 years.  Mike is a happy founder who splits his time between leading the business and his personal pursuits, which include surfing and spending time with his family. He is still passionate about innovation, search marketing technologies, big data and AI, and creating new ways to help smaller businesses succeed.  Learn more at practicalfounders.com.

Raution Jaiswal grew up in India and then worked in management roles at large companies in the US before he discovered a problem experienced by small insurance agencies. He validated the problem, built an early solution, and didn’t quit his full-time job in 2018 until he had 50 paying customers. InsuredMine provides an all-in-one sales CRM (customer relationship management) and marketing automation software for independent insurance agencies in the US. InsuredMine helps improve and automate marketing, sales, and service to help insurance agencies sell more, serve customers better, and become more profitable. It also integrates with many popular agency management systems (AMS). The bootstrapped company is growing up quickly with almost 60 employees, a leadership team, and a growing reputation. In addition to over 1,000 small insurance agency customers, InsuredMine is now being used by some of the largest agency organizations in the US.  Learn more at practicalfounders.com. 

Kelly Mann was a CPA and auditor for 15 years before leaving her employer to start her own CPA firm focused on 401K benefits audits. She discovered a need to automate this process, validated the market with other CPAs, and created the first AuditMiner software. Unfortunately, Kelly was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer just before launch and started aggressive chemotherapy immediately. After a year of treatment, AuditMiner was launched, and CPA firms lined up to buy it.  With her treatments and surgeries behind her, Kelly is now CEO of a fast-growing and profitable SaaS software company with 15 remote employees, hundreds of customers, lots of publicity, and suitors interested in buying the company. Kelly openly shares her personal journey with cancer and how she thinks differently about running a software company than most founders.  Learn more at practicalfounders.com.

Praveen Ghanta, Co-founder and former CEO of Hidden Levers, shares his entrepreneurial journey from MIT graduate to bootstrapped SaaS success. He reveals the strategic decisions that led to selling Hidden Levers for an impressive 16X revenue. Praveen discusses the challenges of transitioning from corporate life, building a product to serve wealth managers, and the advantages of using fractional teams for growth. Now at the helm of Fraction, he emphasizes nurturing talent and practical insights for aspiring founders in the SaaS landscape.

Oliver Low worked for Microsoft and then MySpace in London before creating a successful digital agency in 2010 with two friends. Their agency grew fast and was profitable, so they invested in building software apps to solve problems that they faced helping big brands promote on the web. One of those products, Platform360, turned into a real SaaS product business which became their focus in 2013. Platform360 was a programmatic ad platform for large brands to manage digital advertising in the changing digital privacy environment. They grew quickly with extreme effort and no outside funding, but eventually decided to sell the Platform360 business in 2018 for a modest exit.    Oliver is a savvy and practical “0 to 1” entrepreneur and business builder. He now runs Tiny Studio, the venture builder inside Tiny.com. Tiny is one of the largest “buy and hold” acquirers of bootstrapped and profitable SaaS companies, continuing to run those companies as independent and sustainable businesses.  We talk at length about what we are both seeing in the big wave of successful practical software companies that are starting, growing, and thriving without any VC funding.  Bootstrapped SaaS Topics Discussed on This Podcast with Oliver Low Why Oliver created a digital agency in 2007 after working at Microsoft and Myspace How they built and grew a programmatic ad-tech platform without outside funding Why they chose to sell the company at a challenging time rather than raise big VC funding How Tiny.com works as a holding company that acquires bootstrapped SaaS businesses and holds them long-term as independent companies What Oliver sees in the world of practical SaaS founders from his global perspective Why he started a venture studio inside Tiny.com to incubate practical SaaS businesses Learn more at practicalfounders.com. 

In this expert interview, Vik Thapar of Cypress Growth Capital explains revenue-based financing (RBF) and how it can be very useful for practical SaaS founders. In the last 10 years, Vik and the Cypress team have funded over 50 SaaS and tech-enabled services businesses that have steady recurring revenues and predictable customer acquisition approaches.  Revenue-based financing is a form of non-dilutive funding that is paid back as a fixed percentage of cash receipts until the investment is paid off.  Unlike raising funding from VC or other equity investors, founders with $3M-$10M ARR can use RBF as an efficient option to accelerate growth and increase the value of their companies without losing control or diluting their equity. Royalty-Based Funding Topics Discussed on This Podcast What is royalty-based financing and how is it different than other non-dilutive funding options like venture debt or equity funding from VCs? When is royalty-based financing useful for practical founders by company size and capital needs? When doesn’t royalty-based financing make sense for founders? What time frame is typical for founders to use funding to grow and then exit at a much higher price? What has happened in the royalty-based financing industry in the last 10 years? What’s the typical process and timeline for a founder to receive funding and start paying it back? Learn more at practicalfounders.com.

Bryan Clayton, Co-founder and CEO of Greenpal, discusses the growth and challenges of building a bootstrapped lawncare services marketplace. They focus on the importance of addressing consumer and vendor needs, and share milestones that validated their potential. They also emphasize the potential for growth in the industry and the challenges of scaling a business.