From $0 to $22M ARR in 5 years. Here's a peek at Guillaume Moubeche's finances.

Guillaume Moubeche is the founder of lempire. In just 5 years, he has grown the company from $0 to $20M in revenue, without raising a single dollar in funds. In the process, he has acquired 2 SaaS companies, taken a multimillion cash-out deal, and currently employs 86 people.

I caught up with him to learn about the interesting financial moves he's made, and to get a sense of how he views money. I'll let him speak for himself. 👇

The point of being filthy rich

Guillaume: Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of money. My parents grew up on a farm, they didn’t have a chance to study or get a degree, and sacrificed a lot to give me and my brother a good education.

Becoming a multi-millionaire has taught me one thing - there is no point in being filthy rich if you can’t make a positive impact on the lives of those around you.

💰 For me, the definition of success doesn’t only include how much money I or my startup is making - it includes my happiness and well-being, the well-being of my employees, the happiness of my customers, and all these little things that make you a human being. Not a P&L statement. —Guillaume

$0 to $5M ARR in three years (and $5M to $20M in two)

Guillaume: I know you’re curious about the numbers so let’s [talk about] that. 🚀

• ARR as of July 1, 2023: $22,375,465
• Business bank account: $6M

• Total expenses: $1.1M/mo
• Office Space: $50K/mo
• Salaries: $800K/mo
• Tools: $250K/mo

Personal debt and investments

Guillaume: I bought houses with a loan because I had a fixed rate below 0.7%.

I’ve personally invested in:

• 10+ startups
• 3 VC funds
• Houses/flats
• Crypto
• Stock market
• Life insurance

Being cheap as a multi-millionaire

Guillaume: One thing you should know about me is that I’m a French cheap bastard 😂🇫🇷🥖

I still wear the same $5 Uniqlo t-shirt and I don’t care about any fancy stuff.

I like to spend on things that truly matter to me, like traveling, giving back to my family, and sometimes sports items like a new bike I can take out with my friends on the weekend.

Keep things simple (and save money)

💰 I believe in keeping things simple - I think that sticking to basics is the best way to save money. —Guillaume

Guillaume: I don't pay for an expensive gym membership. I prefer to go running outside, or bike for 100km around the city.

I don't see the need for fancy designer labels or outfits. I prefer normal and comfortable clothes.

I'm not a fan of fancy restaurants. I prefer local spots or cooking at home.

Essentially, this mindset allows me to maintain a comfortable lifestyle and avoid unnecessary stuff.

Bootstrapping is king

Guillaume: When I first got started, I thought that raising funds was the only way to build a successful company.

I used to think that [bootstrappers] didn’t raise funds simply because they couldn’t.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve always followed the bootstrapper mindset because that wouldn’t be true. I tried to get in touch with as many VCs as I could, and at that time, I kept receiving rejection messages.

Some were nice - others not 👇

After spending time building pitch decks, I realized I was wasting time on things that weren’t bringing direct value to the business.

I then decided to switch my focus to only one matrix - profitability.

Profit-Led Growth

Guillaume: We’ve built lempire with a profit-led-growth mindset since the beginning — we started with only $1,000 so we had to be profitable from day 1. And the only money we used for our growth was our revenue.

We believe that profitability is the most sustainable way to grow a business and we want to stay that way.

Profitability gives you the freedom to pivot, experiment, and make decisions based on what’s best for the company rather than what’s best for investors.

And being profitable forces you to fine-tune your product because you know that’s where you’ll get the best long-term ROI. The result: better market fit and happier customers.

Bootstrapping mentality

💰 Adopt the bootstrapping and profit-led growth mindset — spend each dollar as if it were your hard-earned money because, in reality, it is. —Guillaume

Guillaume: Bootstrapping isn't about being cheap, it's about spending wisely and being resourceful.

When you're building your business with limited resources, you have to be creative in finding solutions. Look for cost-effective solutions, leverage free or open-source tools, and continuously seek innovative ways to solve problems.

Also, prioritize investments that have a clear and measurable impact on your business's growth.

It's about making every dollar spent count by ensuring it contributes meaningfully to your goals.

Funding as a means of decreasing risk

Guillaume: Building and growing a profitable company is always a risky process. As the company grows, the risk of failure gets smaller (statistically), but on a personal level the risk level increases.

Essentially, if you build a company that is valued at $100M+, you find yourself with increased pressure and responsibility, as your clients expect top-notch services, and your employees rely on the company's stability for their livelihoods. At the same time, a high valuation doesn’t mean you have money in your personal bank account, which means you have a lot to lose with no safety net.

That’s why we decided to opt for a cash-out deal as we reached a $150M valuation in 2021: My 2 co-founders at the time and I took $30M in cash, and in exchange Expedition Growth Capital got 20% of the company with 1 seat on the board. And soon after, my 2 co-founders left the company for personal reasons.

Since the deal, we now have a board meeting once every quarter and share our financial reports monthly, but our investors don’t interfere in any way with the business operations and day-to-day.

These changes allow us to be more structured while still keeping full control and freedom to make business decisions.

With this money in my bank account, I’m able to be more ambitious, follow my gut, and solely focus on what I’m passionate about — helping 1,000,000 entrepreneurs build profitable businesses.

💰 There’s no right or wrong way to do things, but keep in mind that VCs will give you money in order to make anywhere between 3x and 100x on their investment. This will have severe consequences for your growth strategy and the risks you’re taking. —Guillaume

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Acquiring other businesses

Guillaume: We acquired two other SaaS products, Taplio and Tweet Hunter for an 8 figure deal over 2 years.

Deal structure

Guillaume: In the process, I turned the two founders, Tom and Tibo, who’s actually my middle-school mate, into multi-millionaires.

What I love about making deals between entrepreneurs is that we can openly discuss what we want and the goal is to design a win-win situation down the line.

When acquiring a company, you need to understand two things: The first is what's in it for them — a life-changing amount of money and faster growth by partnering with lempire. The second is what they could lose — their time.

That’s why we spent a lot of time with Tibo and Tom to create the best deal possible to align everyone’s incentives and decided to structure the deal as follows:

Deciding what businesses to acquire

Guillaume: If you’re wondering why a SaaS company selling sales automation tools would acquire a tool to build a personal brand… It’s because sales is all about building a strong relationship with your audience based on trust. And building your personal brand helps you do just that.

That’s why in today’s world, people manage to build billion-dollar businesses thanks to their strong personal brands.

Let me explain: In B2B, prospects can easily assess your credibility by simply checking your LinkedIn profile after you get in touch with them, for example through a cold email or a cold call. When they visit your profile and they see consistent posts about subjects that bring value for them and that receive significant engagement, they will be much more likely to trust you and your expertise in their field.

In short: You go from a total stranger to someone they can trust.

As a team at lempire, our personal brands have helped us generate 20M monthly views on LinkedIn that represent an important acquisition channel for our SaaS products.

Invest in your team

Once a year, we organize a week-long team retreat with all the heads of departments, and work there in submarine mode. During this week, we work as a team to align our strategies, lay out our OKRs, define the vision for the future, and of course, how we are going to achieve that vision together.

We also organize a week-long team-building with the whole team in a different country. Even though we’re remote-friendly, meeting people in real life simply gives us a better sense of who we're working with and really strengthens our company culture. ❤️

In total, we spent $200K on our heads of retreat and team-building in Portugal this year.

Making a team of millionaires

Guillaume: Like I said earlier, for me, success is about helping others. That’s why, over the next 5 years, I plan to make my 100 employees millionaires, which is why I gave all of my permanent employees shares in the company.

I know that to make 100 employees millionaires, we need to build a billion-dollar company.

And, to build a billion-dollar company in the next 5 years, we need to achieve $100M in ARR, which will require new revenue streams.

We love to create new products, and I think when you already have a strong community, building a product makes sense. But, we often underestimate the REAL time it takes to build and sell a SaaS product—shipping a product rapidly is doable, but generating real traction from a product that can actually scale is extremely difficult.

So, we also plan to enter new markets by acquiring other companies targeting SMBs, especially profitable, bootstrapped businesses that generate more than $40k in MRR. 😇

Going full "monk mode" to build a vision

Guillaume: Every year, for 3 months, I rent an AirBnB in South Africa. I isolate myself and dive into a full focus mode that I call 'Monk Mode’. The idea of the monk mode is to create an environment where the impossible becomes possible, and where time doesn’t have the same feeling.

In these three months, I focus on the company's future and use this time to build a vision and create a plan for the next steps of lempire.

I also focus on becoming the best version of myself, building new habits to level up and achieve what I used to think was unachievable.

It's an important part of my Monk Mode, as I believe that by improving myself and my vision for the company, I can unlock new levels of growth.

Be transparent

💰 I think that the more you share your metrics, such as MRR, Churn, LTV, etc., with the world, the more you will feel the need to do better the next time you share something. —Guillaume

Guillaume: This is important to me because it allows me to reflect on everything we've already accomplished and have a clear vision of what's next to come!

On top of that, most people never share real actionable tips or costs. I will never forget the first time I read a transparent article about a startup story.

I got so inspired that day! It felt like I was part of their journey and I wanted to make people feel the same way.

The other reason is that obviously, the more you share honest stuff, the more people will relate to what you say and share your journey, hence more visibility for your company. 🚀

Tools

Guillaume: We use Payfit to manage our payrolls and ProfitWell to track our revenue, cashflow, churn etc. For payment, we use Stripe.

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You can find Guillaume on LinkedIn and his blog, Profit-Led Growth. His business, lempire, creates B2B SaaS products to help startups and SMBs grow their businesses — check out lemlist as an example.

Please note that the above are opinions. It is meant for information purposes only. It is not intended to be financial advice.

And if you'd like to be featured as a guest in a future interview for this series, let me know in the comments!