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SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

How Wil Schroter Made Money at 22 years Old to Eventually Launch Startups.com

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6683 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2020

⏱️ 93 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Transcript

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0:00.0

Will Schroeder was born in 1975 and launched his first company in 1994. That company was an agency,

0:08.8

which he grew to $1.6 million in sales by 1995. And ultimately, two years later in 1997,

0:16.4

sold 51% of the company for north of a million dollars. He was 22 years old and this was his first

0:22.1

cash event in life that gave him a little cushion. Ultimately, that new company grew to about

0:28.1

$150 million in top line sales and $25 million of net income. That company then was bought by

0:34.6

Dan Snyder in 2002, the current owner of the Washington football team.

0:39.8

That was a $300 million deal and was a second cash event for Will as he looked at what to do next.

0:45.4

That next thing ended up becoming startups.com, a full encompassing suite of tools to help entrepreneurs launch their business, but it wasn't always easy.

0:54.9

Will went through many different ideas like swap a lease or Ford it, an early version of a firm,

1:00.3

which is about to go public. Many of these companies he raised for, but ultimately shut down or

1:04.6

failed or they kind of just hum and hoad along, but ultimately, startups.com pursued a strategy

1:09.9

of buying companies and growing ones internally

1:12.5

like fundable. Today, the platform does over $10 million in revenue. It's an eight-figure

1:17.8

business, has over 100 employees, and Will continues to scale it. In this interview, we dive into

1:23.9

how we acquired all these assets, like Zirtual.com, which back in August of 2015 was doing

1:29.6

11 million in top line revenue and 5 million in costs, helping brands get freelancing teams up and

1:36.9

running, essentially virtual assistance. But ultimately what happened was that company two or three

1:42.2

days later was in a lot of trouble

1:44.7

according to the CEO and Will ended up taking it over in a 24-hour all-stock deal.

1:50.4

We dive into Will's entire backstory, all of these deals and how Startups.com came to be today

1:56.0

in this wide-ranging interview. Let's jump in.

2:00.7

Hello, everyone. My guest today is Will Schroeder. And if

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