Episode 766 | Close.com's Amazing Run to $40M ARR (with Steli Efti)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do you achieve both success and longevity in SaaS? In episode 766, Rob chats with Steli Efti about growing Close.com to over $40 million in ARR. Steli shares insights into the importance of maintaining strong co-founder relationships over 12 years, navigating crises, and the importance of emotional resilience in entrepreneurship. They also dive into Close's recent pricing shift to introduce a lower entry-level plan. Topics we cover: (2:08) – Reflecting on 12 years of SaaS at Close (3:50) – Strong co-founder relationships (11:24) – Longevity and consistently showing up (20:23) – Surviving moments of crisis (29:27) – Launching a more affordable pricing tier (34:40) – Getting back into the content game Links from the Show: Exit Strategy by Sherry Walling, PhD & Rob Walling Close Close Sales Guides Episode 498 | Selling During a Pandemic with Steli Efti The 0 to $30 Million Blueprint Steli Efti (@Steli) | X Steli Efti | LinkedIn 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

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's startups for the rest of us. I'm Rob Walling. Today, I'm joined by four-time guest,
0:05.6	Steli FD, co-founder of Clothes.com. We have what I consider to be an amazing conversation
0:12.3	about their pretty amazing growth, being a mostly bootstrapped company, to $40 million in ARR.
0:21.6	I love talking with Selly because he is so thoughtful, but also very passionate.
0:27.5	And he and I have known each other for more than 10 years.
0:31.0	And so there's just this kind of common frame of reference and this understanding of each other's history
0:35.5	that allows us to go pretty deep, pretty quick on topics that I think matter to entrepreneurs. It's a great conversation, and I hope
0:43.9	you enjoy it. Before we dive into that, Exit Strategy, my new book, is available on Amazon and
0:50.9	Audible. You can, of course, go to Exit Strategybook.com to get the links or go to Amazon or Audible
0:56.4	and search for Exit Strategy by Rob and Sherry Walling.
1:00.7	And with that, let's dive into my conversation with Steli.
1:15.7	Stelly. Hello back to startups for the rest of us.
1:17.2	So good to be back.
1:19.2	It's your fourth appearance.
1:21.9	Your last appearance was May of 2020.
1:22.7	Wow.
1:25.4	May of 2020, if that date, the rings of out with it. And it was something about how to sell during a pandemic.
1:28.8	And you were doing a lot of talking about it.
1:31.1	I don't think fondly of those days.
1:33.4	Pandemic days.
1:34.0	I believe you're a four-time microcom speaker.
1:37.1	I was trying to recall.
	...

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