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Startups For the Rest of Us

Episode 611 | Bootstrapping ProfitWell to a $200M Exit (with Patrick Campbell)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 611, join Rob Walling as he chats with Patrick Campbell, the cofounder of ProfitWell, on how he and his co-founders bootstrapped ProfitWell to a $200 million exit. Profitwell was acquired by Paddle earlier this year. We dive into a bunch of topics you have not heard elsewhere, including details about the actual transaction, what was the stock vs. cash split, the revenue breakdown of consulting versus SaaS when they sold as well as talking through his thought process as they were deciding whether to sell. Topics we cover:  [3:53] Using their consulting business to fund and grow Profitwell in the early days  [8:23] The split between cash and stock in Profitwell’s acquisition  [9:49] The percentage of Profitwell’s revenue from consulting vs. SaaS [13:39] The conversations that Patrick and his cofounders had from the get-go about their end goals and how much to reinvest in the business  [15:02] The ownership split between all of the cofounders  [17:08] How he made sure his employees were taken care of in the acquisition   [19:05] Did Patrick ever consider taking funding?  [26:14] How long it took to sell the business from the first contact with Paddle   [31:55] Why should SaaS founders take money off the table once they hit certain milestones?  [36:01] Patrick’s feelings about competing with Stripe  [42:15] Why Patrick moved to Puerto Rico  Links from the Show: Patrick Campbell (@Patticus) I Twitter  Profitwell  Paddle If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you. Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

Transcript

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0:00.0

We have another incredible story today on startups for the rest of us.

0:03.0

In this episode, I chat with Patrick Campbell, the co-founder of Profitwell,

0:07.0

on how he and his co-founders bootstrapped it to a $200 million exit.

0:12.0

And even if you've heard other interviews with him about this acquisition,

0:17.0

I focused on questions that I had not heard answered elsewhere.

0:21.6

I asked a lot of questions about the actual transaction.

0:25.2

Like, what was the stock versus cash split?

0:28.2

How long did you have to stick around?

0:30.2

What was the revenue breakdown of consulting versus SaaS when you sold?

0:33.5

As well as talking through his and his co-founder's thought process as they were deciding whether to sell.

0:38.1

Before we dive into that, I try not to do this often, but if you feel like you've gotten value from

0:43.3

this show, I have a favor to ask you. As you probably know, microconf is the in-person and online

0:48.5

community and event series that is tied to startups for the rest of us. It launched out of this podcast.

0:55.3

MicroConf was created by founders, four founders, and we are doing a survey to find out how we're meeting people's

1:02.0

needs, how we're not, where we can improve, what we can do. We've done one of these maybe every

1:06.9

three or four years at most. And we're just trying to make sure that everything we do with microcomf,

1:12.8

because we have a staff running events and community and mastermind matching and a YouTube

1:17.2

channel.

1:17.8

And we want to make sure that everything we do helps bootstrapped and mostly bootstrap founders

1:22.7

meet, learn, launch, and grow.

1:25.2

So we have this seven-minute questionnaire that will greatly help me

1:29.5

and greatly help producer Xander and the rest of the microcomf team. If you go to futureofmicrocom

...

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