Episode 669 | 10 Years to Overnight Success: Bootstrapping to a Multi-Million Dollar Exit

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In episode 669, Rob Walling chats with Rick Hymanson, founder of detamoov and previously Shugo. They discuss Rick’s exit from Shugo in 2018 in what Rob calls “ten years to overnight success”. Rick recounts an early pivot for the company in finding product market fit, building the business with a day job, the logistics of the exit, and why he’s excited to join TinySeed with detamoov. Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startups The competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America. They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running. When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers who can get started in as early as a week. And for subscribers of Startups For the Rest of Us, you can get 15% off your first 4 week contract with a developer by visiting lemon.io/startups Topics we cover: 1:59 – How Rick felt after exiting Shugo 5:10 – Deciding to start detamoov after the exit 7:09 – Creating a Shugo MVP and pivoting 11:15 – Building a SaaS product while working a day job 15:34 – Transitioning to full time and growing Shugo ARR 20:28 – Expanding the product feature set 22:11 – When did you know you had product-market fit? 23:28 – Finding an acquirer and navigating the process 27:38 – Starting and growing datamoov 31:12 – The value of relationship building 34:43 – IP ownership agreements Links from the Show: Rick Hymanson | LinkedIn detamoov The SaaS Playbook TinySeed 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 | Google

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's startups for the rest of us. I'm Rob Walling. This week, I talk with Rick Heimanson, the founder of Data Move.
0:06.2	In an episode, I like to call 10 years to overnight success. As you listen to this conversation,
0:11.0	you'll hear that Rick bootstrapped his prior company, Shugo, starting in 2008, and grew that
0:18.5	company to over a million in ARR and exited in 2018, so a decade working on
0:25.5	the same company, and then moved on to start a data move, which is in the same space. It's in
0:30.6	payroll and HR, and it's building software for folks who need assistance in those areas.
0:37.0	Rick became a listener of this very podcast in
0:39.3	2021, and his first thought when he was listening was, where was this years ago? He realized this
0:44.8	podcast could have saved him a lot of time and a lot of headache. And so here he is in this
0:49.3	episode to give back to you. As someone who has had an exit and is on his second bootstrap startup,
0:55.3	and who is gaining traction with data move, we not only tell his story, but we especially
1:00.3	focus on several learnings that he took from his experience, building, growing, and exiting
1:06.6	Shugo. Before we dive into that, my book, the SaaS Playbook, it's almost out. I ran a Kickstarter.
1:12.7	I have hardcover books here in my office, and I have several thousands sitting at a
1:17.1	fulfillment center getting ready to be shipped out to Kickstarter backers. In addition, I have a
1:22.6	final proof of the paperback copy that you can still get at sassplaybook.com.
1:28.4	If you haven't given it a look yet, head over there to learn more about what's in the book
1:33.4	and how it's kind of all the stuff that I've learned over the years.
1:37.4	I've tried to put it into a single tome.
1:40.5	And with that, let's dive into my conversation with Rick Heimanson, founder of Data Move.
1:53.7	Rick Heimanson, welcome to start up to the rest of us.
1:56.2	Hey, excited to be here.
	...

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