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    AMA – 1 year update: $3.5M revenue after 18 months

    Exactly a year ago I posted here about my startup, which had $600k revenue in its first 6 months. You guys asked a bunch of awesome questions. Now that we're in this dead bit again between Christmas and New Year's, I'm back with another AMA.

    Long story short, we've booked $3.5M revenue since we started 18 months ago. Just under $3M is from the last 12 months. We're now a team of 14 full-timers with 40+ customers.

    Most private equity and M&A bros put our EBITDA valuation multiple at around 7x, making us worth $10M+. This is my first proper business, so I feel extremely blessed this Christmas to have it in my life. It's a boundless source of joy (second only to my missus), fun and an unbelievable wealth-building vehicle.

    AMA – will do my best to answer all your questions.

    AMA – 1 year update: $3.5M revenue after 18 months
    byu/Accomplished-Fix7360 inEntrepreneur



    Posted by Accomplished-Fix7360

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    21 Comments

    2. theweird69420 on

      Congrats on this! Had a few questions:

      1. Did you raise anything? If so, how much, and at what point?
      2. How did you get your first 100 users?
      3. Are you currently relying on paid ads?
      4. What’s your LTV:CAC ratio?
      5. What’s your churn?

    4. radovskyb on

      Hey, first of all, congratz!

      I wasn’t here for the previous AMA, so hopefully not duplicating questions.

      1. Were you already a part of the industry that your startup is now a part of, and created your solutions to address personal pain points, or something else?

      2. If there were any times when you felt dejected and unsure if success was coming, how did you power through those moments?

      Thanks!

    5. newbizhigh on

      Assuming you have 50 customers, youre making $70,000 per customer to save them on software? What software do you work with that saves these niche customers so much? Also, whafs your profit percentage on 3.5M?

    6. Routine-Preference24 on

      How did you get your first 5 customers & are there any incumbents in your current domain? If so, did you undercut on pricing or what was your differentiation?

    8. chanderbing0212 on

      congrats on the growth. when you were making big calls like hiring or scaling spend, did you already have numbers you fully trusted, or did you still end up sanity-checking / rebuilding spreadsheets before deciding?

    9. Ours15 on

      Can you tell me how to make an Intel CPU at home from scratch? Thank you. Also it would be nice if you could give me some of your money.

    10. Visual-Instance-4198 on

      How do you know when a business is the right one? And if not, how do you stick with it. At what stage do you get funding or go for sales?

    11. Desperate_Engineer80 on

      Congrats!!

      What was your experience bootstrapping? Did you work alongside starting or use savings etc?

      What have you learned about hiring?

      Thanks!!

    12. danknadoflex on

      How do you start a startup? Like how does that work? Where do you find someone as a person starting your first proper business to say, “give me a bunch of money” so I can build this thing? How does that work legally contractually? Why does it all seem so complicated to me?

    13. WuduAI_Angela on

      You are indeed blessed and highly favored! Congratulations and wishing you more success in the new year! 🎉🎉🥳🥳🥳👏🏽👏🏽

    15. DiamondDash2k on

      Nice job. I think I remember reading your thread from last year.

      How did you originally get into the business? Was your experience previously in consulting and negotiation for software or you just learnt it?

      Also are most of the employees sales people?

    17. infinitythingy on

      I’m a AI and automation dev have work experience of 6 month I wanna join you guys if you want!it would be fun✌🏻

    18. According-Pain9664 on

      First of all, congratulations.

      I would like to ask if you had any advice for a student in his middle school year on what to do next (he would like entrepreneurship or his own business from scratch), what advice would you give?

    19. robbyslaughter on

      Are you a broker (you take the money and buy the software) or are you a consultant (you negotiate on behalf of your customer and they pay you when you save them money?)

    20. gdkod on

      Couldn’t find the info. What’s your business about? Which problem does it solve and where do you see it in a year?

    21. Derp0189 on

      Read through the thread, but never saw your first ama. Curious about your approach… Do you specialize in certain software, and seek out large customers of that software? Or do you look for generic customers with high software spending and your team does a deep dive into the software they use to try and find savings?

      Also – is a big portion of the work just reviewing updated EULAs for loopholes/changes?

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