Every week, host Greg Head interviews a successful software founder who started, grew, and sometimes sold a valuable software company—without big funding.
Raution Jaiswal grew up in India and then worked in management roles at large companies in the US before he discovered a problem experienced by small insurance agencies. He validated the problem, built an early … Listen to this episode
Kelly Mann was a CPA and auditor for 15 years before leaving her employer to start her own CPA firm focused on 401K benefits audits. She discovered a need to automate this process, validated the … Listen to this episode
Praveen Ghanta graduated from MIT with degrees in computer science and economics and worked for various financial services companies after trying his hand at a software startup. Working in his spare time, he built a … Listen to this episode
Oliver Low worked for Microsoft and then MySpace in London before creating a successful digital agency in 2010 with two friends. Their agency grew fast and was profitable, so they invested in building software apps … Listen to this episode
In this expert interview, Vik Thapar of Cypress Growth Capital explains revenue-based financing (RBF) and how it can be very useful for practical SaaS founders. In the last 10 years, Vik and the Cypress team have … Listen to this episode
Bryan Clayton is the co-founder and CEO of GreenPal, a leading on-demand marketplace of lawn care services for homeowners across the US. With a team of 25 remote employees, they help 300,000 homeowners connect with … Listen to this episode
Ben Murray is a former SaaS CFO and finance professional who helps SaaS founders understand the basics of SaaS accounting, finance, and metrics for their growing businesses. Ben has a popular blog and podcast with … Listen to this episode
Wissam Tabbara is a serial entrepreneur who has created multiple software startups in Seattle since 2009 when he left Microsoft where he was a software development manager. He led multiple startup technology teams and now … Listen to this episode
Lloyed Lobo is the co-founder and former president of Boast.ai, a leading platform to help software companies in the US and Canada redeem available government tax credits. Technology-powered Boast.ai was launched in 2017 after starting a … Listen to this episode
Ryan Goodman joined the startup in the early days of the business intelligence and analytics market in 2003 as a specialist helping large customers adopt this new technology. This startup was acquired by the successful … Listen to this episode
As the host of the Practical Founders Podcast, I have interviewed 46 successful SaaS founders and 6 savvy experts in the first year of weekly episodes. In this episode, I share some of the deeper … Listen to this episode
Patrick Fingles grew a successful roofing company with hundreds in the Baltimore-Washington DC area. In 2013, they created software to help new salespeople estimate, quote, and close new roofing sales. They started selling the software … Listen to this episode
Jordan Fleming grew up in Toronto and New York, then lived in Edinburgh, Scotland for 15 years where he created a successful consultancy helping larger businesses automate and improve their processes. His experience developing workflow … Listen to this episode
Gregory Shepard is a serial entrepreneur who has created and sold 12 companies, including marketing software and ad technology companies. In 2016, he sold two of his bootstrapped software companies, AffiliateTraction and AdAssured to eBay … Listen to this episode
Deepak Sindwani is a former software entrepreneur who has been a professional investor in software companies for over 20 years. Deepak is the co-founder and managing partner of Wavecrest Growth Partners, a growth equity investor … Listen to this episode
Sam Knight is the co-founder and former president of BOLT Software, a project management and scheduling software for the construction trades that build residential homes. Sam helped lead the BOLT team as it grew before … Listen to this episode
Chris Kern is an expert independent M&A advisor who has helped over 150 growing tech companies get financing, obtain investment, or sell their companies. He is Managing Director of Windstream Partners where he advises smaller … Listen to this episode
Joshua Strebel started a small SEO and website agency in the early 2000s after graduating from university. Joshua and his wife Sally experimented with website hosting using WordPress with low monthly fees while they ran … Listen to this episode
Dave Savage was a top-producing mortgage loan officer in the early 1990s who used computers and software to help him sell more. He became a software entrepreneur by creating a new software solution for loan … Listen to this episode
Beth Sanders was selling computer software and equipment for a regional computer retailer in Ohio when she recorded her grandmother's life stories on a tape recorder. It was so powerful she decided to create a … Listen to this episode
Josh Haynam grew up in the Central Valley of California just 100 miles from the tech center of Silicon Valley without any awareness of tech jobs or tech businesses when he lived there. He was … Listen to this episode
Esben Friis-Jensen was a technology professional in Copenhagen, Denmark before he and three Danish friends moved to San Francisco in 2013 to start a new startup called Cobalt. Cobalt.io grew steadily and raised several rounds … Listen to this episode
Massimo Arrigoni grew up in Milan, Italy, and moved to California 27 years ago to create software products and start a family, eventually moving to the San Francisco area in Silicon Valley. While leading product … Listen to this episode
"My B2B SaaS startup needs just more warm leads. But we have struggled when we hire junior salespeople to call on and email cold prospects to generate qualified leads that the CEO or salespeople can … Listen to this episode
Dave Whorton is an experienced tech investor and funded founder who spent the first 20 years of his career at the highest levels of Silicon Valley venture capital and tech-boom startups. He started his career … Listen to this episode
Windermere Real Estate is a large and well-known residential real estate broker in the Seattle area. In the late 1990s, they invested to build an internal software system to power their own business and differentiate … Listen to this episode
Patrick Campbell wasn't expecting to be an entrepreneur when he grew up, but after his first few jobs, he struck out on his own in 2012 to create a software company to help SaaS businesses … Listen to this episode
Jon Nordmark founded eBags.com in 1998 as one of the first Internet e-commerce companies and grew it into the largest online retailer of luggage, bags, and travel accessories. Jon was previously a successful corporate executive … Listen to this episode
Perry Rosenbloom moved to Boulder, Colorado, in 2011 and started a small business offering digital marketing and custom website services. After building a website for his mother-in-law, an independent therapist, Perry created a scrappy subscription-based … Listen to this episode
Gopal Krishnamurthy was an early BI and data analytics expert working for a large company when he left to start a BI consulting company called Visual BI in 2010. Visual BI grew to over 300 … Listen to this episode
Matt Watson was a two-time software company with two successful exits before he was 40 years old. He started his first company, VinSolutions, in his basement in Kansas City in 2006. VinSolutions started by helping … Listen to this episode
Deb Muller was an experienced HR executive at a large global company who left her job to start a consultancy specializing in managing important employee incident investigations. Surprisingly, her customers asked her for a software … Listen to this episode
Vivek Bhaskaran was a computer science student in college who worked on an online survey project for a professor in the marketing department. After university, he built a new survey tool with a fellow software … Listen to this episode
Scott McCausland was an experienced software sales leader who decided to go out on his own in 2008 to build a new software business. His technical cofounder built the first version of their new software … Listen to this episode
Oliver Palmer helped start a mobile app development agency in Sydney, Australia that built simple apps for early mobile phones. When the iPhone launched, Tigerspike grew very fast by creating branded mobile apps for large … Listen to this episode
Sandeep Kumar quit his job working for an Indian consulting company to start a software company in 2005, when product-focused startups were not common in India. For the next 10 years, they experimented with product … Listen to this episode
Sarah Hum studied graphic design in university before she discovered she loved to help software startups create new products. She moved to Silicon Valley to work at Facebook as a product designer, but a side … Listen to this episode
Mark Abbott was an active investor and board member for 20 years when he realized that most of the 100+ companies he helped were not good a their "business fundamentals." The fundamentals of setting long-term … Listen to this episode
Craig Letton quit his corporate sales job in 2011 to take over his parents' small printing business in Scotland. It was his first time running a business and he learned hard business lessons quickly. Eventually, … Listen to this episode
Jeff Matlow is a serial entrepreneur and a crazy triathlete and long-distance runner who found a way to put those passions together in a crazy software startup. He saw an opportunity to create a better … Listen to this episode
Howard Gottlieb created and sold several businesses before starting a school fundraising website in 2003 called Easy Fundraising Ideas. It grew into the most popular Internet website for school fundraisers. He experimented with many business … Listen to this episode
Scott Pickard didn't know he was embarking on a 15-year software entrepreneurial journey when he signed on to manage a horse veterinary practice in Calgary, Canada. But they had built some internal software to help … Listen to this episode
Josh Cameron and three university friends started a scrappy software company in Brisbane Australia just after graduating. They had run the popular college bar where they discovered there was no simple software solution to track, … Listen to this episode
Joe Griffin recently left his job of 8 years as co-CEO of ClearVoice, a company that he and co-founder Jay Swanson started in 2014 out of their digital marketing agency business in Phoenix, Arizona. ClearVoice … Listen to this episode
John Francis is a general partner at Stout Street Capital, a venture capital fund based in Denver, Colorado. Stout Street has made 70 small seed and pre-seed investments in software startups outside the big tech … Listen to this episode
Zach Moreno was a full-stack developer and coding instructor in Northern California in 2015 when he discovered audio podcasts. There wasn't a remote podcast software for recording high-quality audio over the Internet, so he decided … Listen to this episode
Karl Swannie was a geographer working in the scenic city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, when he started analyzing social media data based on location. He quickly saw there was valuable real-time information that was … Listen to this episode
Brad Redding calls his first startup a “successful failure.” It didn’t end well, but he learned several very important lessons that helped him be more successful with his second startup, Elevar. Now the bootstrapped SaaS … Listen to this episode
Daniel Yuabov was a 22-year-old IT manager in New York who wanted to buy a new car. He was so frustrated with the buying experience that he started a software company called Carvoy to make … Listen to this episode
Melissa Kwan created her first software company in 2014 and then sold it in 2019. It was extremely difficult to start and even harder to grow, but it’s how she learned what not to do … Listen to this episode
Seth Radman created, grew, and sold two music app startups in his twenties. A saxophone player in his college marching band, Seth was passionate about helping musicians and school band directors to improve how they … Listen to this episode
Dougal Cameron created Golden Section to provide support and practical funding to SaaS founders with deep experience in select vertical markets. Their founder-first approach is different than the traditional VC or private equity investment model … Listen to this episode
Sean Meister was a sales professional and leader with a successful career selling hospital and medical supplies before he left to join his long-time friend who had a vision for a new software company serving … Listen to this episode
Thomas Brown creatively bootstrapped his software company and ran it as a very small "lifestyle" business before committing to growing his SaaS business with a larger team.
Thomas was an independent insurance claims adjuster in the … Listen to this episode
Nick Santora bootstrapped Curricula for five years with his co-founders before raising $3M in practical funding and then getting acquired in 2022 for $22 million.
Nick and his co-founders quit their jobs to build innovative story-based … Listen to this episode
Jeremy Clarke created, grew, and sold his software company in a most unusual and successful way:
He grew WebMerge to $5M revenue by just himself for 6 years before hiring his first and only employee, a … Listen to this episode
Luke Hohmann was an engineering and product management leader at Silicon Valley startups before he became an acclaimed author and speaker in the enterprise software development world. He used funding from his consulting business—plus revenue … Listen to this episode
Steve Gelley created two successful businesses and learned important lessons before he and a cofounder self-funded a third startup that was acquired in only 18 months for a big prize.
Steve started his entrepreneurial journey by … Listen to this episode
Hamid Shojaee is a technical founder and serial entrepreneur who created several software companies and dozens of products in the last 25 years. He sold his two software companies in 2021—Axosoft and Pure Chat—and now … Listen to this episode
Dan Jaffe is the founder and CEO of LawLytics, a practical website marketing platform for small law firms. Dan was a practicing lawyer before he became an internet entrepreneur with his first venture, which he … Listen to this episode
Rafael Zimberoff was CEO of ShipRush, a software company he founded in 2001, then grew and eventually sold in 2017 to Descartes Systems Group for $17 million. Rafael started ShipRush as an add-on product for … Listen to this episode
Jonathan Cronstedt, also known as JCron, was the president of Kajabi software from 2016 through 2021 as he helped the company grow past the early startup years. JCron is a savvy entrepreneur, digital marketer, and … Listen to this episode
Todd Watson is the owner and CEO of Showit, a popular no-code website builder and platform for designers and photographers. Todd is a native of Phoenix, Arizona where he started as a videographer before joining … Listen to this episode
