10 lessons on bootstrapping a $200m business | Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2023

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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Patrick Campbell is the founder and CEO of ProfitWell, which he bootstrapped and sold for over $200 million. In this special episode, we explore 10 big ideas from Patrick, including tips for hiring employees who align with your company values, creating winning pricing and retention strategies, determining the right time to raise money, and more. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale your SaaS business, this must-listen episode offers practical and actionable advice that will help you avoid missteps and think differently.

Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/10-lessons-on-bootstrapping-a-200m-business-patrick-campbell-profitwell/#transcript

Where to find Patrick Campbell:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Patticus

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickccampbell/

• Email: [email protected]

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• Douglas Atkin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doatkin/

• Patrick Campbell’s guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy/comments

• ProfitWell: https://www.profitwell.com/

• The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup: https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8

• Edward Snowden on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Snowden

• The Flywheel: https://www.hubspot.com/flywheel

• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884

• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355

• Powerful: https://www.amazon.com/Powerful/dp/1939714206/r

• The West Wing on HBOMax: https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GX5nwgQDNJZ6aoQEAAAHJ

• Notion: https://www.notion.so/

• Descript: https://www.descript.com/

• Coda: https://coda.io/

• KTool: https://ktool.io/

• Tweet Hunter: https://tweethunter.io/

• Apple Watch Ultra: https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-ultra/

• Loom: https://www.loom.com/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Patrick’s background

(05:12) Building a team

(07:38) How ProfitWell handled a conflict using their guiding principle, the most charitable interpretation

(10:41) Why new hires need to fit in with the company culture

(12:19) The bootstrapping vs. funding debate

(13:38) When founders should think about raising funds

(18:08) When and how companies should make pricing changes to their products or services

(23:46) Strategic retention and tactical retention, and why the latter is often missed

(28:48) Why people don’t want to pay for a SaaS analytics tool

(29:56) The importance of mission metrics for shipping

(34:42) First-principle thinking, the “5 whys,” and Patrick’s alternative approach

(40:21) The importance of frequent customer research

(43:15) Simple strategies for doing customer research

(46:13) Understanding your competitors

(51:06) Why veterans make great hires

(54:08) Why local strategies are more effective for some companies

(59:21) Why the middle of the funnel is the biggest opportunity

(1:04:54) Lightning round

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Transcript

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0:14.8	The bratty thing here is that real professional ship like at the end of the day like real profession I don't care what if you're a marketer or product person engineer like it doesn't like ops people ops real professional ship and they ship at a pretty high frequency for whatever they're doing.
0:15.8	In my opinion, your tempo framework
0:17.7	is more important than your org design.
0:20.4	And so if you've ever had like a team that seems really, really smart, but they're always planning or they don't really like ship a lot or you've had trouble where everyone kind of gets it at the leadership level, but then the team below them and below them
0:34.5	seems to be kind of going in a different direction. You probably don't have enough alignment and
0:38.8	you don't have enough alignment on like what good looks like in terms of like temper.
0:43.0	Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts
0:50.0	to learn from their hard-won experiences, building and growing today's most successful
0:53.6	products.
0:54.6	Today my guest is Patrick Campbell.
0:56.6	Patrick is the founder and CEO of Profidwell, which he bootstrapped and sold without any
1:01.2	funding for over $200 million.
1:03.3	I've been a big fan of Profidwell and Patrick for many years.
1:06.7	He's one of the most insightful and smartest people that I know constantly sharing wisdom
1:10.6	on Twitter and in his newsletter, primarily on pricing and
1:14.1	retention and team building and all the elements of building a successful
1:18.4	SAS business. I've been excited to get Patrick on the podcast and I
1:21.6	launched it and I think this may be the most action-packed signal-to-noise episode yet.
1:26.0	We cover 10 topics in an hour including hot takes on team building, bootstrapping, shipping, competitive analysis, user research,
1:34.4	and of course pricing and retention. Do not miss this episode. It is one of my new favorites.
1:39.2	With that, I bring you Patrick Campbell after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. you to accelerate growth. If your business stores any data in the cloud, then you've
1:54.7	likely been asked or you're going to be asked about your SOC-2 compliance.
	...

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