Episode description

Hey there! It's Melissa, and I'm  the Cofounder and CEO of eWebinar. At the time of this recording, we’d just crossed $1m ARR, 36 months after product launch.

In the last 1.5 years posting on LinkedIn about my experiences bootstrapping three startups, I noticed that the stories that get the most engagement are the ones that gave people a window into the reality of what it’s like to build a startup with very few resources. The feedback I’ve gotten has been about how relatable it was to hear from a non-unicorn founder.

That got me thinking: There isn’t much original content that dives into a day in the life of an average, non-venture backed founder. That’s why I decided to switch things up. 

This season, rather than focus on the experience of others by interviewing them like in Season One, I want to tell you what it was actually like for us to bootstrap a startup to $1m in 36 months.

On each episode, my co-host (Todd Parmley, our COO) and I will go in-depth into one major aspect of our journey. We'll share war stories, mistakes, and lessons learned. 

Todd was a customer of mine in my last startup, and the first person I went to when I decided to start eWebinar. He’s just as much of a cofounder as my CTO/cofounder who joined me a year into this venture - but we’ll get into that in the later episodes.

You’ll be getting two different perspectives: one from a founder and the other from the first person to join a startup.

So then, what can you expect from this season? We’ll talk about things ranging from how we put together an all-star team with limited capital to the best and worst investments we made in our business to key pricing decisions that turned out to be costly mistakes. You’ll hear horror stories like how users figured out loopholes to misuse our free trial, costing us $8000 in 10 days, and success stories like how we ended up owning our SEO strategy having zero experience in digital marketing, which now makes up over 50% of our demo traffic.

Though our story won’t always be pretty, we hope it will be insightful. Our goal is to demystify bootstrapping by sharing our experience of it, and tell you what it’s really like to figure things out as you go, so that A) You’ll know you’re not alone in the struggle and B) Maybe you can find some of the inspiration you need to forge your own success.

If these topics resonate with you, subscribe to ProfitLed on your favorite podcast app to get notified of new episodes and also join our mailing list by going to profitled.fm. 

P.S. I promise to only share things you’ll actually care about.

If there are particular topics you want us to get into this season, let me know by connecting with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from you.

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Subscribe to 'your founder next door', Melissa's bi-monthly newsletter on how to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!