Episode 705 | From Bootstrapped to Mostly Bootstrapped to Venture Backed

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 705, Rob Walling interviews Braden Dennis, co-founder and CEO of FinChat. They discuss Braden’s journey going from fully bootstrapped, all the way to taking venture capital as FinChat scaled. Braden shares his experience in initially launching to an audience, how they successfully launched a second product, and how FinChat operates well with multiple co-founders. 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: 2:55 – What does FinChat look like today? 4:00 – Starting with an audience and building a SaaS 6:40 – Formulating the product and moving upmarket 8:35 – Launching a second product 12:25 – The common pitfall of launching a second product 16:25 – How FinChat found explosive growth 19:27 – Deciding to take venture funding 26:13 – Making hard decisions with incomplete information 30:31 – Working with multiple co-founders Links from the Show: Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024 Apply for Director of Marketing and Operations for MicroConf MicroConf YouTube Channel TinySeed Braden Dennis (@BradoCapital) | X FinChat (@finchat_io) | X FinChat Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea 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:

Transcript

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0:00.0	Another week, another episode of Startups of the Rest of Us.
0:03.0	I'm your host Rob Walling.
0:04.2	This week I talk with Braden Dennis, the co-founder of Finchat,
0:08.2	about their long journey of launching a product with an existing audience.
0:13.0	And in fact, if you've ever heard me quote the stat
0:15.2	that of all the companies I've invested in,
0:18.0	170 companies, that less than 5% of them had an audience before they launched their SaaS,
0:25.1	FinChat is one of them. And you'll hear Braden and I talk about the pros and cons of having that
0:30.3	audience in this episode. In addition, they also launched a second product and pivoted the entire
0:36.0	company to that second product.
0:38.1	They've been bootstrapped, mostly bootstrapped, and now they've raised venture funding.
0:42.7	He and his co-founders have taken a lot of big risks and made big bets, and they're doing
0:48.5	pretty well with it.
0:49.5	It's a really interesting conversation today.
0:51.2	I hope you stick around.
0:52.6	Before we dive into that, I want to let
0:54.5	you know it's your last chance to get tickets to MicroConf Atlanta. The event is April 21st
1:00.1	through the 23rd. Speakers include Rand Fishkin from Spark Toro, Asia Arrango from Demandmaven,
1:07.4	Stephen Steers, myself, and Dr. Sherry Walling. It's going to be hosted and emceed by me and
1:13.8	Leanna Patch of Punchline Copy. I'm also going to be doing a fireside chat with Ben Chesnut, the co-founder
1:19.8	of MailChimp. He does not do very many public appearances, and so I'm very excited to host him
1:25.4	at MicroConf this year. MicroConf.comf.com slash US, if you're interested in grabbing tickets, again, tickets are going
	...

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