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 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.

This week’s podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io.

Quote from Guy Rubin, CEO of ebsta

“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. And if you’re small, I would encourage founders to ask different people to be advisors to give you an outside perspective. You’d be surprised if people love being asked for help and ask you some difficult questions.”

• Guy Rubin on LinkedIn
• ebsta on LinkedIn
• ebsta website
• 2024 ebsta SaaS Sales Benchmarks Report

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Stuart Draper founded Stukent, an innovative ed-tech company that provides simulated internships for business students. Stukent started by focusing on high-quality digital marketing education for colleges and universities using up-to-date digital textbooks and content. They then added a simulation system for students to practice their digital marketing skills.

Stukent grew steadily with less than $1M in outside funding, which helped them bridge the long and seasonal buying cycles of big schools. The team grew to over 100 employees and nearly $10 million in revenue serving marketing professors and their students.

In 2021, they engaged with Vista Point Advisors, an M&A advisor firm, to shop the company to prospective buyers and investors, eventually getting a majority investment from Tritium Partners. Stuart describes the M&A process, what worked well, and how he transitioned out of the company after two years of continued growth.

This week’s podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I’ve interviewed here on this podcast.

Quote from Stuart Draper, founder of Stukent

“When we officially sold a major part of our company to investors, we had a brief celebration. My CFO and I called each other and screamed as loud as we could on the phone in a fun moment. We got there, we did this. My family also took a big trip and I got a break.

“But then it was back to work. I was still the CEO and I still run this thing and I’ve got new investors that also need returns. I’m going to go deliver for these guys. They gave me a big payday, so I’m going to make sure they have a win too.

“After the second board meeting with our investors, I realized this is way harder than I thought. After eight board meetings and doubling the business again, I wasn’t enjoying this as much anymore. The board meetings were hard for me. Prepping for them was super stressful.

“So we found a new CEO for Stukent, and he’s doing great. Now I get to sit back in my chair at the board meeting, listen in, share my advice and opinions and come back in three months.”

• Stuart Draper on LinkedIn
• Stukent on LinkedIn
• Stukent website
• Tritium Partners website

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app.

John Stewart created and sold an engineering services business, then grew a Salesforce integration services company before building some early software products. One of their software experiments allowed Salesforce customers to see and interact with their customer data on a map. When customers paid for it and revenue grew, he and his co-founder wound down services and focused on their mapping product.

MapAnything grew quickly to over $2M ARR as a bootstrapped software company, with some revenue-based financing from Lighter Capital to help test their growth plans. When they focused on field service route optimization and grew quickly, MapAnything raised several rounds of venture capital to grow even faster by focusing its sales and marketing efforts within the Salesforce ecosystem.

MapAnything reached $22 million in ARR before Salesforce acquired the company for $250 million. John stayed on with Salesforce for six months before moving on. John and a co-founder launched Fastbreak.ai three years later, a sports schedule optimization platform for professional and amateur sports leagues.

Quote from John Stewart, former CEO of MapAnything

“I tell founders most often that you really need to focus on sales and distribution. As a CEO of a startup in the tech space or SaaS, the only thing that really matters is revenue growth. Technology is technology. Even if you have unique IP right now, it won’t be unique soon enough.

“So you need to figure out your go-to-market motion. That’s the single most important thing. Revenue cures all ills. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the company as long as revenue is growing. It’s all about revenue growth more than anything.”

• John Stewart on LinkedIn
• MapAnything on LinkedIn
• Salesforce website
• Fastbreak.ai website

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app.

Mike Kovarik is the founder and former CEO of Attribytes, a software company he started, grew, and successfully sold in just over five years. Mike was a data analytics leader at large food distributors, where he discovered a chronic challenge with low-quality product data in their massive e-commerce systems. He quit his job, built a product with a friend, and his former employer became his first customer.

Attribytes grew steadily in the next few years, serving food distributors and retailers in the US, with Mike making the first sales and slowly adding new employees. He invested his savings in the company and raised just over $2 million from a strategic and several angel investors in Phoenix, Arizona. They grew to nearly $5 million in ARR in 2019 with just over 20 employees.

In 2020, Mike sold the company to Syndigo, a larger data management provider that served the same industry. He joined Syndigo for over a year to lead the acquisition of other data management companies to expand their product offerings. When their acquisition strategy changed in 2022, Mike left to take a break and then acquire and retool another vertical software company called ShopControlller.

Quote from Mike Kovarik, founder of Attribytes

"I built a little spreadsheet and I put in what our revenue was, what our current valuation was, and then what that exit would look like after taxes for me, just to see what that dollar amount was. We were at almost $5M ARR, and we were getting interest from acquirers, so it was already interesting.

"I created another spreadsheet to show what would happen if we raised big VC funding and invested that lover for 5-10 years to grow. What rate of return would I get? How would we be diluted? What annual recurring revenue would we need to get to, and what valuation would that be? What would my dollar amount be?

"The reality is that the amount for me would be pretty close to the same if we sold now or raised a big VC round. And I'm not trying to risk everything to potentially buy a plane. I could have a big exit now and have a lake house and a place in Flagstaff, and my kids' kids will be good. What else do I need?"

• Mike Kovarik on LinkedIn
• Attribytes on LinkedIn
• Syndigo website
• ShopController website

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app.