Episode 492 | From Zero to $55k MRR to Exit (in 2 Years) with Feedback Panda

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob interviews Danielle Simpson and Arvid Kahl, co-founders of FeedbackPanda, a SaaS business they bootstrapped to $55k MRR with no outside funding and no employees. They sold directly to teachers, a price-sensitive market, and they used referral programs and word of mouth to create rapid growth. You will hear about the struggles, victories, highs, and lows of their startup journey. Arvid and Danielle give honest, powerful insight into what it was really like to manage their company just the two of them, and what ultimately led to their decision to sell their company for a life-changing amount of money. * We are in a slightly different headspace in this episode, because we recorded this before the COVID-19 crisis. But we still wanted to share this episode, because we want you to benefit from this powerful conversation. The finer points of the episode: 2:12 - What it was like to sell FeedbackPanda for a lifechanging sum of money 6:40 - Why they ultimately made the decision to sell their business 12:40 - How the perfect combination of luck and skill led to their business’ huge success 14:38 - What it was like selling to teachers, a price-sensitive market 18:44 - Using referral programs and word-of-mouth to generate extremely rapid growth 24:20 - Can their approach to growth be replicated in other industries? 29:11 - More about their decision not to hire anyone 33:49 - The biggest low point of their startup journey and how they overcame them 38:25 - When did they start thinking about selling their company? 40:34 - What is next for Arvid and Danielle? Items mentioned in this episode: The Bootstrapped Founder Danielle Simpson Danielle's Twitter Arvid's Twitter

Transcript

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0:00.0	Quick note before we dive into this episode of startups for the rest of us. I recorded this
0:03.8	interview a couple months ago and then due to both coronavirus, but a couple other factors,
0:09.4	it's just been delayed longer than I thought it would. So we make no mention of Corona. We
0:14.8	are in a little bit different headspace than I think we might be today. But the story the founders
0:19.7	tell, the conversation is still
0:21.3	extremely compelling. I just wanted you to have that in mind as you listen to this episode.
0:26.8	Welcome to this week's episode of startups for the rest of us. I'm your host, Rob Walling. Each
0:30.9	week on the show, you hear from startup founders who are ambitious, but some of them bootstrap and some
0:36.4	self-fund and others raise small amounts
0:39.5	of money. The uniting factor is that they want to build great companies and they want to build
0:43.8	great lives for themselves. And they don't want to go down the traditional venture track of go big,
0:49.1	go home. I have to build a unicorn or bust. This week we hear from Arvid Call and Danielle Simpson, the co-founders of
0:55.4	Feedback Panda. Arvid and Danielle did an attendee talk at MicroConf in Croatia just a few months back,
1:02.2	and I wanted to invite them on the show because of how interesting their story is. Over two years,
1:06.7	they bootstrap Feedback Panda to 55K MRR with no employees. Feedback Panda is student feedback for
1:13.9	teachers. So they were selling into the teacher market. They had rapid growth via word of mouth
1:18.3	and a clever referral program. And they really caught a nice wave in language learning.
1:23.6	So we dive into all kinds of things today. They eventually sold the company for a life-changing sum of money after two years.
1:30.3	And in this conversation, you'll hear about Arvid and Danielle's struggles, their victories, their failures, the anxiety, the highs and the lows.
1:39.0	And we dig into a lot of pretty fascinating things.
1:41.6	So I hope you enjoy this conversation.
1:43.9	And with that, let's dive
	...

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