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Bootstrapping to Millions in Revenue, Not Once, But Twice! with Ajay Goel of GMass

Episode #081

Ajay Goel (@PartTimeSnob) loves to code. He also loves to grow profitable Internet businesses. In 2003, Ajay transitioned from making websites for clients to building his own email marketing application, Jangomail, which he eventually grew to over $5M in annual revenue and sold to a private equity firm. He then retired to a life of luxury, conversation, and relaxation, and lived happily ever after… or did he? In this episode, we dive into the pitfalls of bootstrapping vs fundraising, the strategic decisions that differentiate big wins from HUGE wins, and why Ajay felt the need to come back for round two with his new business GMass.

  1. 4

    This down to earth interview was very, very helpful to me. I've been slogging away at rebuilding an application I developed for a client and offer it under an SaaS model, and it has been really tough trying to face how I'm going to deal with my shortcomings, especially without the funding (and the personal inclination even if I had it) to hire a sales team and multilingual support staff. Thanks very much for sharing your story Ajay. It's given me a lifeline to hang on to.

  2. 4

    So excited this is live! Thanks @csallen. If anyone has any follow-up questions, please hit me up on Twitter, @PartTimeSnob.

  3. 3

    wow... hacking at its finest!

  4. 3

    Great interview. Very down to earth. Love the bit where he admits he doesn't know how to reinvest to grow the business.

  5. 3

    Love this interview. Thanks @csallen and @PartTimeSnob

  6. 1

    My Main Takeaways:

    • GMass makes over $100k MRR and is a tool to allow people to send emails to a lot of recipients via Gmail.

    • Ajay is a developer. He does most of the development for GMass, but has a contractor and a few virtual assistance on his team.

    • Leverage what you know: Ajay has a had a long career in software development and email marketing products specifically.

    • Ajay’s first email marketing product was called DjangoMail that he bought and ran from 2003 to 2013 and sold to a private equity group. He then spent the next couple of years, reading, and thinking about what he wanted to do next.

    • Ajay graduated from university in 1998.

    • Ajay built websites in the summers between university years, and he enjoyed this lifestyle more than getting a job.

    • In the early days, a lot of email marketing products started as web development client projects that turned into full on products.

    • The growth for Ajay’s first product was fueled entirely by pay-per-click advertising.

    • A few customers will be “Whales”, these are customers that make up a significant portion of your revenue.

    • In the early days of the internet when Ajay started business, he had to learn from trial and error, because there weren’t many learning resources.

    • DjangoMail and Mailchimp were launched the same year, Mailchimp took off, while DjangoMail only hit $6-7 million ARR at its peak. One of the reasons for his was because Ajay didn’t know how to reinvest profits, so he just pocketed the profits, while Mailchimp reinvested their profits.

    • Valuations of companies are not based on revenue and profit, but based on growth trajectory: Ajay sold DjangoMail for much less than other businesses that were generating the same ARR as DjangoMail, because the growth trajectory of DjangoMail flatlined, while the other businesses were growing.

    • Ajay compares himself to his peers, he’s always seeing how well he is performing in relation to others. (Courtland does this too).

    • Don’t try to sell your business to people who do not have to money to buy it: Ajay had actively been trying to sell DjangoMail for 3 years, from 2010 to 2013, and prior to selling, he had 7 failed attempts, where he had signed a letter of intent with the buyer, but after due-diligence the deal fell apart. (A lot of these people didn’t have the money to buy, but were trying to simultaneously raise the money from investors while doing the due diligence.)

    • Leverage your network: Ajay hired his marketing friend to pitch his business DjangoMail to potential buyers, and it worked, he found a willing buyer.

    • Work is Life: After selling DjangoMail, Ajay went into a “mini-retirement” where he didn’t work, he started dating, living in a new city. He describes this as the happiest year of his life. He was just “floating along, having random conversations with strangers, not having to fix bugs at night, etc”... but he got BORED! He wanted to create stuff again, he wanted to leave a lasting impact.

    • Ajay built GMass on a hunch, he felt curious and excited, so decided to build it. He then shared it with friends and family to see if anyone was interested. This is the benefit of being a software developer (Being able to build things on a hunch).

    • After releasing GMass on ProductHunt and getting covered by bloggers, his userbase started picking up.

    • Self-doubt will creep up on you: Even despite his success, every day Ajay feels like all his users on GMass will leave for a better product.

    • Ajay didn’t charge for GMass in the beginning, he built up the user base, so he could collect feedback and improve the product, so by the time he started charging, people were willing to pay.

    • In the beginning Ajay drove traffic through ProductHunt, Reddit, Bloggers, and the Chrome Web Store. This drove in 50-60 signups a day. When he started charging, he then started doing paid Ads.

    • Research what users want and build THAT (Ajay hadn’t been following this advice, he just built things in the moment when he thought of them.

    • Ajay says that he lacks skills in sales and marketing, so the model of his SaaS products have been salesperson-less models. Instead, he focuses in-bound lead generation, and optimizing conversion rates.

    • GMass is not a customer-centric company, Ajay just focuses on creating a great product. The users have to take care of themselves. Ajay’s personal philosophy has been embedded into the culture of GMass.

    • Ajay hasn’t raised money, so he has a lot of freedom to run his business how he wants. Ajay Chooses freedom over money.

    • GMass breaks once a month due to the fact that it’s based on GMail, and the GMail developers keep making changes, that render GMass unusable.

    • If GMass went out of business, Ajay would go back to what he did after he sold DjangoMail, which is to say that he would read, go to Starbucks a lot, spend time with family, have random conversations with strangers… until the next idea hits him.

    • Advice for beginners: Don’t follow the patterns that everyone else writes/blogs about. Carve your own path. Figure out your own unique strategies. Be different from everyone else.

  7. 1

    Great interview! When growing a business on your own, most people struggle with self-doubt, specially when they are fully aware of their own limitations. But it's so great to see how Ajay is able to deal with all of that in a very smart way by playing to his strengths. Thanks for sharing!

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