Bootstrapped to $82M: How Callum Mckeefery Built Reviews.io from His Kitchen Table

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Entrepreneurship, Business

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Callum Mckeefery built Reviews.io from scratch with his wife—no funding, no equity dilution, and no fluff. In this episode, he shares how they scaled to $12M ARR, outpaced VC-backed competitors, and exited for $82M in an all-cash deal.

He breaks down the exact viral loop that created SEO-fueled growth, how they hit $240K revenue per employee, and why he chose not to give employees equity—but still made many millionaires. Callum also opens up about the emotional driver behind the exit: his son's rare genetic condition, and the cutting-edge research he's now funding.

Finally, Callum talks about his new SaaS startup, Partner.io, where he's rebuilding from zero with the same gritty playbook.

In this episode, you'll learn:

How to engineer viral loops in B2B SaaS
Why small ACV doesn't mean slow growth
How to win against VC-backed competition without fundraising
The emotional side of selling a company
Tactical breakdown: SEO, paid ads, and partnerships as growth levers
Post-exit reflections and the pitfalls of private equity buyers
What he's building next at Partner.io

Perfect for: SaaS founders, B2B operators, bootstrappers, PE firms, and investors looking for real, gritty founder stories with no BS.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	How much did you sell the company for?
0:02.0	$82 million, all cash.
0:03.0	Me and my wife started the company from our kitchen table.
0:06.0	So you're at 10, 11, $12 million of revenue, 50 people, $240,000 of revenue per employee.
0:11.0	I built a really nice viral loop.
0:14.0	We found that if we got two or three reviews on a profile, the page would start to do really well.
0:19.0	I had some big competitism reviews reviews like well-financed,
0:22.4	VC-backed companies. And I truly believe that we did well against them, against these well-funded
0:29.1	companies. And how many folks were full-time when you exited? Was that 50? And we was growing pretty
0:33.6	fast, to be honest at that time. To be clear, you and your wife owned 100% equity. 100%. Hey folks, my guest today is Callum McKeifery. He built and sold bootstrapped, I should mention, reviews.io for $82 million cash. She's now working on a company called partner.io. Callum, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, and looking forward to talk. So let's give the audience sort a hook here. And then I'll go back and teach everyone sort of how you did it. So the end of the story is you sold the company, right? So how much did you sell the company for? Was it all cash? 8 to 2 million, all cash. I've got a couple of shares still in Out Pub with Cleaer.io now. And I'm still a board member of that.
1:11.7	I wanted a clean deal.
1:13.1	I don't know if you know my backstory.
1:15.7	I've got a son who's pretty poorly.
1:19.0	He's disabled.
1:20.0	He's got a really rare genetic disease.
1:21.8	And I really wanted to have a bit of security.
1:23.9	I wanted to spend a bit of time with him.
1:26.1	And the offer came in at the right time. Any other time,
1:30.0	probably in my career, I probably wouldn't have taken that offer because I really truly loved
1:35.6	what I was doing at reviews and I think I still had a lot more to give to the company, but
1:40.2	I had to think about my fan emotionally.
1:45.4	And we'll loop back to all that.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nathan Latka, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nathan Latka and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.