Our Journey to 1M ARR at eWebinar: Full Podcast
Binge all 27 episodes of ProfitLed, Our Journey to 1M in 36 months.
Hi, it’s Melissa, and welcome to “your founder next door”, a bi-weekly column with relatable stories of my 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.
💡 Here are the 27 episodes of ProfitLed Season Two, detailing our journey to $1M ARR at eWebinar. This season is finally complete! Don’t worry, Season Three will come later this year with a completely different theme.
Inspiration behind ProfitLed 💡
In the last couple years posting on LinkedIn and sharing my experiences bootstrapping three startups, I noticed the stories that people found the most engaging were the ones that gave them a view into the reality of what it’s like to build a startup with very few resources. The feedback I’ve gotten has been about how relatable it was to hear from a non-unicorn founder.
That got me thinking: There isn’t much original content that offers a window into the day-to-day life of an average, non-venture backed founder. That was the inspiration behind starting my own podcast, ProfitLed.
About Season Two: Our Journey to $1M 💰
For Season Two, rather than interviewing others and focusing on their experience as I did e in Season One, I wanted to tell you what it was actually like for us to bootstrap a startup to $1M in 36 months; which we hit in July 2023.
With 27 episodes released over the last year, this season is finally complete!
It took eWebinar 16 months to go from idea to product launch, then another 36 months to hit $1M ARR. That's a total of 52 months from our incorporation date.
You might have read about companies that get to $1M in a year, much less now with AI startups and the world riding that wave, but those are outliers and not the norm. 36 months to $1M is actually the median, even for funded companies. “Normal” is not newsworthy and doesn’t get the media spotlight it deserves so you might feel like you’re moving too slow even when you’re in the right place.
Our goal in making this season for you was to demystify bootstrapping by sharing our experience of it, and tell you what it’s like to figure things out as you go.
Full Episode List 🎧
In each episode, my co-host (Todd Parmley, our COO) and I went in-depth into one major aspect of our journey. We shared war stories, mistakes, and lessons learned.
1. Welcome to Season Two: Our Journey to $1M
2. Picking 1 Idea Out of 1000
3. Why Bootstrapping Over Venture Capital
4. Building a Founding Team with Limited Resources
5. Recruiting a Top 1% Cofounder and CTO
6. Going from Idea to Launch in 16 months
7. Coming Up With Our Business Model and Starting Price Point
8. Launching MVP and Getting Customers to Pay on Day 1
9. Product Launched, Now What?
10. Founder-Led Sales
11. Leveraging Customers to Sell Our Product
12. Staying Super Duper Lean
13. Owning SEO When Marketing Agencies Suck
14. 10 GTM Strategies that Didn't Work
15. How We Decided on Our Roadmap
16. Our $130k Mistake in Affiliate Marketing
17. You Pay Peanuts, You Get Monkeys
18. The Customer is NOT Always Right
19. 12 $0 Marketing Strategies
20. Social Selling and Personal Branding
21. When Our Startup Becomes a Real Business
22. 5 Wrong Hires that Ended Up Costing $450k
23. Why We Stay Away from Enterprise
24. 5 Pricing Decisions that Turned Out to be Costly Mistakes
25. What Lifestyle Business Means to Us
26. 9 Most Important PLG Lessons Learned
27. The 12 Most Shocking Surprises on Our Way to $1M ARR
🙏 If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving us a review on Apple or Spotify as that will help us continue to make episodes for you.
The only way this grows is by word of mouth. Please share this with friends who you think might also benefit from ProfitLed and my newsletter, like yourself!
Your support is deeply appreciated. 🥲
Coming Up - ProfitLed Season Three: Purpose, Passion, Profit 🎙️
Right now, I’m going to take a much needed break from producing this podcast. But don’t worry, Season Three will come later this year with a different theme around Purpose, Passion, and Profit.
I’ll be having conversations with other bootstrapped entrepreneurs who, like me, intentionally designed their businesses around their dream lifestyle, how they got there, and what it felt like when they finally achieved it.
I’ll be asking them tough questions about things I’ve been struggling with in the last year, like how they navigate major shifts in purpose and passion as they come into financial success after years of hustling. And how they keep motivation and inspiration high if they no longer feel the burning desire to keep moving forward because their priorities have changed.
🔔 Stay tuned and be the first to know when the next season goes live by subscribing to this newsletter.
Some stuff you might find interesting 👇
Growth Unhinged: The 10 biggest mistakes I made bootstrapping to $1M ARR
My story and what inspired this podcast: How I went from chasing unicorns to bootstrapping
Thank you for reading!
— Melissa ✌️
Newsletters I follow (and think you should too) 🗞️
Kyle Poyar: Growth Unhinged - In-depth case studies and deep dives on pricing & packaging, go-to-market strategy, SaaS metrics, and product-led growth.
Leah Tharin: ProducTea - Product-led B2B expert with 25 years of operator and executive experience, curating actionable advice for founders and CXOs who want to connect their product to revenue at scale.
Greg Head: PracticalFounders - Weekly interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding.
Kristi Faltorusso: The Journey - Relatable stories, learnings, and advice from 13+ year professional journey in Customer Success, leadership and SaaS.
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If you enjoyed this piece and found it valuable, please consider sharing it with friends who you think would also benefit from this column. They can also sign up at melissakwan.com.
The only way this grows is by word of mouth, so I’d really appreciate all the help you’re willing to give.
You are at $5M ARR?!?! WHOA! Congrats!! That's so awesome! I'm currently on episode 7 of season 2 and actually meeting with a former colleague to re-enact our own version of episode 6 for where we want to go with our platform next. I made all the mistakes for our first phase so for phase 2 - want to ensure we prioritize and build what's most important that our industry partners will pay for!
And pumped for Season 3!