546: In Retrospect - Building BigCommerce: Mitch Harper’s Guide to Scaling a SaaS Empire

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 662 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're diving back into another episode from the Foundr Archives to revisit my interview with Mitch Harper, founder of BigCommerce - as well as a long-time mentor and coach of mine who has been driving force behind Foundr’s success. In this episode, Mitch Harper takes us behind the scenes of his incredible entrepreneurial journey. From building software at the age of 12 to co-founding one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, Mitch shares the strategies and lessons that helped him scale BigCommerce from a bootstrapped startup to a billion-dollar company. He discusses the importance of mitigating risk in business, why he avoided venture capital for as long as possible, and how he cultivated a leadership style that allowed his team to thrive. Listeners will learn actionable insights into scaling a SaaS business, mastering e-commerce, and building a strong company culture. In this interview you will learn: - The journey of bootstrapping BigCommerce and raising $250 million - The importance of mitigating risk as an entrepreneur - Cultivating leadership skills and building a strong team - Navigating the challenges of scaling a SaaS business - The power of customer feedback in product development - Strategies for raising venture capital and working with investors Click here to start your business for $1. You’ll get all-access foundr+, where you’ll find more in-depth, proven strategies from founders like our guest today and support and advice from our global community of 30,000 founders. If you loved this conversation and learned something new, rate and review this episode. Stay in touch with us, follow foundr on your favorite platform: Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook X LinkedIn Magazine

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Founder Fam, today we're jumping back into the archive to bring you an all-time favorite episode
0:06.6	with one of my old mentors, Mitch Harper, who's the co-founder of a massive company called Big Commerce.
0:14.2	Now, Mitch is a longtime mentor to me and coach and the driving force behind founder's success
0:20.0	and the things that I learned from him
0:22.8	were so invaluable and this interview is just a small fraction of just how incredible this guy
0:29.7	is. So I want to share this with you guys again. We've got so many incredible interviews.
0:34.3	Sometimes it's hard to find and sift through all the noise. So let's jump in. Welcome, Mitch Harper.
0:40.5	Hear the stories. Learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.
0:47.3	Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
0:54.2	The first question I ask everyone that comes on is,
0:57.0	how did you get your job?
0:59.2	My job.
1:00.6	My job as an entrepreneur or my first real employee job.
1:05.1	Yeah, I guess how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?
1:08.4	Oh, wow, that goes back.
1:09.9	So I started building software when I was 12.
1:15.7	12.
1:16.0	12.
1:17.7	It was a pretty loose definition of software.
1:19.7	So I was using, you're probably way too young to know what I'm even talking about,
1:23.2	but I was on Q Basic on an old XT computer back in the day, probably around 1994. It was 12. Yeah. And I was on QBASIC on an old XT computer back in the day, probably around 1994.
1:29.5	It was 12, yeah.
	...

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