From 0 to Exit within 2 years — bootstrapped

Imgur

On Friday March 18th 2022, RocketChart SARL celebrated its official second anniversary. What a crazy journey, full of failures, mistakes, learnings, and successes. But one week earlier, we celebrated something else ... Yes, we are thrilled to announce that we have been acquired by one of the company who inspired us younger, for a life changing amount of money 🎉

We are 3 french bootstrappers, working remotely, mainly located in France🍷🥖

2 years and a half ago, we started a challenging adventure: launching a BtoB SaaS business – 100% bootstrapped. This business is RocketChart, a cash flow management software for french SMBs. You know, the kind of solution you dreamt about to help you make accurate cash flow predictions and real-time cash tracking.

I wrote 3x +6,000 words long articles to share our learnings, mistakes and successes – in full transparency, zero bullshit.

You're gonna learn

how we got the idea of this SaaS
how to validate your idea in 24 hours
how we found +350 beta testers with 2 Facebook posts
how we iterated on the product quickly despite full-time jobs
why RocketChart obsession almost killed it 😔
how we fine tuned a Product Management Engine
how providing value to people makes magic
how to leverage your Beta to improve your SaaS product 🪄
how we got our first 10 users
... then our first 10 customers
what tech architecture we implemented to have a bug-free product
how we set up our Acquisitions channels
why you need to measure, iterate, and learn
how we generated a steady (and healthy) growth
why we almost shut down the company 😖
... resulting in a new life changing market positioning
how to receive your 1st Term Sheet on the 24th of December 🎄
what is the process of an acquisition
why we finally accepted the buying offer 🥳

Here are the articles ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-0-exit-within-2-years-bootstrapped-philippe-vanderstigel/

What if you want to do the same?

Each business or startup has its own story, successes, and failures. Each business is different. I'm not going to give you the magical receipt to launch and then sell your business. These are just tips and how-tos that you can digest and adapt to your own business if it's what you want 💎

Identify a market trend

To do a successful exit with your bootstrapped business, the best strategy is to do a complementary solution of big players that aligns with a market trend. When we launched RocketChart, the cash flow software market in France was only at its beginning. For the next 2 years, we were in the middle of a rising tsunami: the cash flow market was growing fast with more players. Many big players in the Fintech ecosystem contacted us to make partnerships to offer such a solution to their customers. I guess, the timing was key ✨

Focus on one thing and stand up as a key player

It's easier to be the best software that does 1 thing well, rather than a software doing many things moderately. Focus on one clear pain point, and do your best to solve it. Also, if people can identify you in a clear market category, then you have to make some noise in this market category to stand as one of the key players. Be creative ❤️

Create a simple, intuitive, and stable product

Many prospects became customers because they loved the simple User Experience of our product. This was one of our main differentiators since the beginning, and it is still the case today. The main benefit of a good Ux is less Customer Support. Because your app is so intuitive, users won't contact you. If you combine this with a bug-free product, then you will save valuable time on Customer Support 🤩

Keep the momentum

During the whole acquisition process, from the first discussion to the official signatures, Sellsy kept a very cadential timing: we were meeting every Monday for many weeks, no matter what. If you enter such a process, I encourage you to cadence the meetings to keep the momentum. If you slow down, you will lose focus. Yes, it is exhausting, especially because you have to operate your day-to-day business in parallel 🥵

Thanks for taking the time to read our story — hope you enjoyed it ❤️

If you learned a few things through this journey, it would be awesome if you can react, comment or share this article. Thanks you so much 🙏🏽