Episode 688 | Growing Boot.dev From $6k to $110k in Monthly Revenue in 15 Months

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In episode 688, Rob Walling interviews Lane Wagner, founder of Boot.dev. Boot.dev is a learning platform gamified to teach backend development. They discuss the journey of bootstrapping Boot.dev, its explosive growth, and its unique business model. Lane also shares challenges of running a B2C business, why he took some funding, and the significance of customer lifetime value over MRR in his business. Topics we cover: 2:38 – Boot.dev seeing incredible growth 3:35 – Growing on YouTube with partnerships 5:42 – Teaching Python and Go as a B2C business 7:49 – “This is not really SaaS”, considering JTBD 11:18 – The beginnings of Boot.dev, serving the backend niche 14:21 – Gaining the confidence to quit the day job 15:51 – Deciding to raise funding and “mostly” bootstrap 20:31 – Enduring hardship before turning the corner on growth 26:38 – Finding the right revenue metric for the business Links from the Show: MicroConf US - Atlanta - April 21 - 23, 2024 Interested in Sponsoring MicroConf Content? Subscribe for Exclusive Episodes Lane from Boot.dev (@wagslane) | X Boot.dev Profitable, at last! Purple Cow by Seth Godin 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	Welcome back to startups for the rest of us. I'm Rob Walling. And this week I talk with Lane Wagner of boot.com. About how he's mostly bootstrapped, his coding learning platform to the most recent months net revenue of 110,000. And we cover a bit of his journey, getting it started, how he was able to bootstrap it,
0:22.5	why he raised funding, whether or not that wound up being a good idea,
0:26.1	as well as diving in to what got his growth to dramatically accelerate,
0:31.2	where he was growing not very fast.
0:34.2	And then suddenly things ticked up end of the right.
0:37.0	And I asked him about that.
0:38.3	Before we dive into that, tickets for MicroConf US in Atlanta next April 24 are on sale. This event
0:46.8	will sell out if you're thinking about coming to Atlanta, April 21st through the 23rd, to see me co-host this event with Leanna Patch and to see speakers like
0:57.2	myself, Rand Fishkin, and several others, head to microconf.comf.com slash US to grab your ticket
1:03.9	before they sell out. We had an amazing event just a few months ago in Denver, and I expect the
1:10.3	event in Atlanta to be no different.
1:12.4	So microconf.com slash us to grab your ticket today.
1:16.0	Do you want to reach tens of thousands of potential customers
1:19.2	between our microconv events,
1:21.9	start-ups for the rest of us,
1:23.3	our YouTube channel, our email newsletter,
1:25.3	and all the other ways we interact with our large and growing and loyal audience of startup founders.
1:33.2	We have a lot of options for you to reach B2B SaaS founders with your product or service.
1:39.1	Drop us an email at sponsors at microconf.com.
1:42.2	Before we dive into our conversation, if you haven't downloaded
1:45.6	the two top secret exclusive episodes of this podcast that have never been in the feed,
1:51.5	they're called eight things you must know when launching your SaaS and 10 things you should
	...

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