Raising VC funding is not very common. And it’s very expensive for founders, but…

There’s something that many SaaS founders miss by not having experienced investors:

Help from expert advisors who are very committed to you and your business.

Think about it. VCs “pay” for the right to counsel the CEO to help them think through strategic issues, overcome crises, and grow up as a CEO.

Most bootstrapped founders don’t pay for the best advice they can get.

This works when they get started, but they can often get stuck if they procrastinate in getting supportive outside advice forever.

You don’t need investors to get experienced, intense, outside, specialized advice.

But you do need to ask for it and invite serious people to help you.

Guy Rubin is the co-founder and CEO of Ebsta, a revenue intelligence platform that works with Salesforce and Hubspot to automatically analyze existing data to improve sales performance.

Started in London in 2012, Ebsta found success in the early days of the Salesforce marketplace and addon economy as a data tool integrated with customer emails.

Ebsta has since become a complete revenue intelligence platform, serving sales teams with 10-100 sales reps.

With 400 customers, 30 employees, and no VC funding, ebsta competes with a focused approach to play in the massive Salesforce ecosystem and against huge competitors.

Guy was stuck for years in the daily “doing.” His business is now moving faster with support from experienced advisors who work closely with him.

As he describes on this week’s podcast:

“We found ourselves in a place where we had some amazingly talented, very driven, very focused doers, and they were happy to work together as a common goal and get stuff done.

“What moved the bar for me as the CEO was bringing on board advisors. I’ve now got four board advisors and a chairman sitting around me. We also brought on a CTO, CPO, and CFO, who are very experienced. So bring in those experts around you, people independent of those doing the doing.

“Don’t get me wrong; you need the doers. They’re absolutely vital, but I also needed experts to help me at the running stage. That was the best thing I ever did: bringing those expert advisors in.”

Guy Rubin, Founder and CEO of Ebsta

Guy talks about their many pivots, running the business with his wife as cofounder, and the benefits and challenges of not being in San Francisco with VC funding.

With deep data across thousands of sales reps, Ebsta publishes an annual Ebsta Sales Benchmark Report with specific data about close rates, quota attainment, and data-driven factors to improve sales performance.

Check out this insightful interview with Guy Rubin on the Practical Founders Podcast.