3 people bootstrapped to $60M exit
A success story so unbelievable I had to fact check…
Hi, it’s Melissa, and welcome (back) to “your founder next door”, a weekly publication with stories and tidbits of my human journey bootstrapping eWebinar to $5m ARR. No BS, just straight-up truth bombs on what it’s like to build a company without an abundance of resources or friends in high places.
The story I thought was clickbait 🤨
A couple of years ago, I read a story about a company called Userflow. Three people bootstrapped it to $4.6 million in ARR, then sold it to Beamer for a reported $60 million.
I didn’t believe it.
Having built three startups myself, I know what it takes to build a product, win customers, generate revenue, and keep those customers happy through support and success. That is typically not the work of three people.
There are a lot of these articles on the internet that overstate the situation and leave out the backstory. I figured this was one of them. My guess was they had a big team of outsourced contractors they didn’t count as employees. At eWebinar, we technically have zero employees because everyone is a contractor, so I know exactly how that math can be spun to make a headline more clickable.
I thought it was too good to be true, and didn’t think more about it.
Then I met the guy behind it 🤝
Fast forward to last year. Esben Friis-Jensen, the cofounder of Userflow, and I had been following each other on LinkedIn. He’d started working with Wes Bush to build out the ProductLed community, and I was one of the founders he reached out to, to see if I’d be a good fit.
We got to chatting, and of course I had to ask: Was his story real?
Not only was it real. The article undersold it. Userflow wasn’t really a three-person startup. It was a two-person startup, Esben and his cofounder Sebastian, plus a designer who was part-time until the final stretch.
When I asked about their journey, I was bracing for a huge backstory. Some secret weapons, near-death moments, and crazy grinds. What I got was almost anticlimactic. They found a need. They built a product. It grew through inbound. They said no to the things they didn’t want to do and doubled down on the channels that worked.
That’s it. That’s the whole story.
It’s the truest demonstration of product-market fit I’ve ever heard. The most beautiful part was that there was no big reveal.
Sometimes it really is that simple.
My conversation with Esben on ProfitLed 🎙️
I knew I had to have him on Season 3 of ProfitLed, Passion, Profit, and Purpose, because his story goes against everything we’re told about what building a successful company has to look like.
Userflow wasn’t his first company. Before that, Esben spent seven years building Cobalt, a VC-backed cybersecurity company that raised $37 million and grew to over 200 employees. It was the company most founders dream of having. He chose to leave without a financial outcome because it was no longer giving him joy.
Following his departure, he built Userflow as the complete opposite. No VC. No hiring. No meetings. Or rather, one meeting a week that eventually turned into a Slack conversation.
Instead of hiring, he and Sebastian stayed as lean as possible and paid themselves first. Huge salaries, so they could live a really good life while building a great company, instead of suffering for years and waiting for an exit that may never come. I love this because it took me three startups to learn it. Founders have to take care of themselves first. If you’re constantly in survival mode, you can’t make good decisions.
They protected their lifestyle so fiercely that they hid the book-a-demo button on their website and turned down sales calls unless people did the trial first. Esben joked that they became kind of arrogant, but most people who tried the product came back saying they didn’t need a call after all. That “arrogance” forced the product to sell itself.
When the acquisition conversation came around, they weren’t even looking to sell. They did the math on how many years of salary the deal was worth, made sure it justified giving up the life they’d built, and only then said yes.
Today, Esben is essentially retired in his early 40s. He travels with his family, exercises, and consults on product-led growth only because he wants to. The freedom he was chasing when he moved from Copenhagen to San Francisco in 2013 for Cobalt? He’s living it.
Why this matters 💡
There are a thousand ways to skin a cat. Every time I think I’ve seen them all, a story like this proves me wrong.
As founders, we’re quick to project our own experience onto everyone else. We hand out unsolicited advice about what’s right and wrong, what works and what doesn’t. I’m guilty of this too. Sometimes I want validation for what I’m doing myself!
But a business is so much more than revenue. It’s your lifestyle. It’s your happiness. Revenue is just one sliver of the whole thing.
In fact, I’d argue the happier you are, the more revenue you make. Not the other way around. Revenue at all costs demands sacrifices, and your well-being is usually one of the things on the table.
Could Esben and Sebastian have doubled their revenue with five times the team? Maybe. Could they have doubled their exit? Maybe. But for sure, they would not have lived the life they wanted while building it.
Stories like this defy gravity for me. They stretch what I personally believe is possible, and they give me hope. That’s exactly why I take the time to tell them on ProfitLed.
Success comes in all shapes and sizes, and no one else’s experience or opinion gets to decide whether you’re on the right path.
It doesn’t have to be that complicated: does building your company this way make you happy? If it does, keep going. If it doesn’t, change it. Even if it costs you revenue.
An exit has a price. Your happiness is priceless.
To hear our full conversation, tune into this episode of ProfitLed here: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
Till next time,
— Melissa, your founder next door ✌️
What did you think of this article? Let me know!
Season 3 of my podcast, ProfitLed, is now live.
We’re exploring the intersection of Passion, Profit, and Purpose, and how those shifts as founders come into financial success. Find it on: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
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This spreads the word and keeps me writing content that will inspire founders to keep doing what they’re doing, knowing they’re not alone.
Thank you 💜 The only way this grows is by word of mouth, so I’d really appreciate all the help you’re willing to give.
we are researching VCs instead but it's interesting to read the other side. paying themselves big salaries first instead of suffering for a maybe-exit is the real lesson.
I really love your focus on building the life you want! It’s the best reminder and I think as a startup founder you need to hear it from time to time, it’s so incredibly easy to get carried away by the day to days