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Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

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Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

#221

Congrats! What made you commit and build this project when you were 22 year old vs million others SAAS you could have built at that time? Say, a CRM to compete with Salesforce, or a new web based Excel or web based Photoshop tool?

This was my 5th startup. During my college days I kept launching startups (Kroomsa, Precimark, MyJugaad.in). Failure of all these made me introspect and I realized I was trapped into the engineer's fallacy: build things without knowing or caring about how to market them. This pushed me to learn marketing and I fell deeper into the rabbit hole. So, my next attempt was build a marketing suite as I was learning a lot ab…

Thanks for this. To get it straight, you decided to go for marketing niche has it was an industry that obsessed you.

From their, feedback allowed to focus on one thing and do it well. This makes sense as you probably stretched yourself too thin. But the thing I don't get is, what was the trigger/pivot that made you go for 'A/B/ testing and not another segment of marketing niche?

At that time, weren't there other players in A/B segment who were far more established? What competitive edge did you see that made you go all in in A/B and which eventually took off?

Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

#222
post #72

Congrats! Questions: * Are you happy with the journey, and the time horizon to exit? * As advice to the impatient, do you have any insight into whether a sufficiently big exit could've been sooner?

- Yes, I'm very happy!

- Advice, paradoxically, is to not gun for an exit. Only companies that don't need an exit get an exit. (It's sort of like dating).

Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

#223

Congrats! Since it seems you're based in India, I hope you can continue to invest in other promising Indian startups in the coming years!

Yes, I'm running https://turingsdream.co and intend to do a lot more of helping others going forward.

Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

#224
post #29

Wow, what an inspiring story? Care to share any stats, such as team size, when you hit your first ARR milestones, or anything else?

We hit our first million in 18 months when we were ~10 (I think).

My first milestone was $1000 (my salary before starting Wingify). The first month I launched, made $4000 and it kept doubling from there for a while.

I remember being glued to the customer and revenue chart for the first few years. I had even coded a small utility to make a small ka-ching sound on my laptop whenever we get a new customer :)

Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

#225

Congrats! Thrilled for you and the team.

Thanks Patrick!

This couldn't have happened without you. You have impacted more people than you may realize.

I distinctly remember when I asked your feedback on my $9/mo plan, you told me to go for $99/mo. Baffled on how can someone pay so much for what I just coded, I settled for $49/mo. Should have listened to you.. :)

Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

#226

I’m sure you made a lot of money on this exit, but given that your company was sold for so much it must mean you had already been making good money before the sale? Why sell?

I wasn't involved in day to day that much, and felt it was the right time to pass the baton.

Re: Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

#227

I really appreciate this post, especially after some of the recent ones about how we're in a startup winter. I'm bootstrapping a project on the side (although I acquired it as a POC, didn't build from scratch), and whether it's "realistic" or not, stories like this are still inspiring. Thank you!

Good luck!
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