Brian Dosal was the founder and CEO of BrightGauge, a software company he bootstrapped and grew to almost $10M ARR with his brother before successfully selling the company in 2019. BrightGauge was a business analytics and dashboard for key metrics for the Managed Service Provider (MSP) industry.
After his intense 9-year journey at BrightGauge, Brian “retired” to spend more time with his growing family. He enjoyed his free time but eventually returned to the software startup game with his second company, Strety.
Strety is a fast-growing SaaS business with a popular app for small businesses using the EOS® approach to manage their businesses. It has 10 employees, hundreds of customers and partners, and no outside funding. Brian brought back some of his previous team to build another sustainable and valuable software company.
Quote from Brian Dosal, co-founder and CEO of Strety
“It was surreal to sell my first company, BrightGauge. I think one time in college I was as hungover as I was the day after the sale. We announced that we sold the company in January, and I left the next day with no email and nothing to do. 37 years old.
“And I was thinking, All right, now what? Then COVID hit a year later, and it was like the world was coming to an end. I was in a good spot, and that’s when I officially retired. To be honest, I didn’t know what I was going to do; I knew I was too young to retire.
“My wife is a physician, and she went back to work the next day. We had a four-month-old kid, too. My brother thought I was a little crazy doing nothing, but I kind of enjoyed that time. It actually forced me to enjoy the outdoors more now that we’re living in Utah.
“But one of the dreams was to take our Strety product concept that we started years ago and give it another go. So we started working on that with a new energy.”