10 lessons on bootstrapping a $200m business | Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell)

The bratty thing here is that real professionals ship. Like, at the end of the day, like, real profess-... I don't care what... if you're a marketer, a product person, engineer. Like, it doesn't... Like, ops person, people ops. Real professionals ship and they ship at a pretty high frequency for whatever they're doing. In my opinion, your tempo framework is more important than your org design. And so, if you've ever had, like, a team that seems really, really smart but they're always planning or they, they don't really, like, ship a lot, or you've had trouble where everyone kind of gets it at the leadership level but then the team below them and below them seems to be kind of going in a different direction, you probably don't have enough alignment. And you don't have enough alignment on, like, what good looks like in terms of, like, tempo.

(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Patrick Campbell. Patrick is the founder and CEO of ProfitWell which he bootstrapped and sold without any funding for over 200 million dollars. I've been a big fan of ProfitWell and of Patrick for many years. He's one of the most insightful and smartest people that I know, constantly sharing wisdom on Twitter and in his newsletter, primarily on pricing and retention and team building and all of the elements of building a successful SaaS business. I've been excited to get Patrick on the podcast since I launched it, and I think this may be the most action-packed signal to noise episode yet. We cover 10 topics in an hour including hot takes on team building, bootstrapping, shipping, competitive analysis, user research and of course pricing and retention. Do not miss this episode. It is one of my new favorites. With that, I bring you Patrick Campbell after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate growth. If your business stores any data in the cloud then you've likely been asked or you're going to be asked about your SOC 2 compliance. SOC 2 is a way to prove your company's taking proper security measures to protect customer data and builds trust with customers and partners, especially those with serious security requirements. Also, if you want to sell to the enterprise, proving security is essential. SOC 2 can either open the door for bigger and better deals or it can put your business on hold. If you don't have a SOC 2, there's a good chance you won't even get a seat at the table. Beginning a SOC 2 report can be a huge burden, especially for startups. It's time-consuming, tedious and expensive. Enter Vanta. Over 3,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2. Vanta can get you ready for security audits in weeks instead of months, less than a third of the time that it usually takes. For a limited time, Lenny's podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Just go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A .com/lenny to learn more and to claim your discount. Get started today. This episode is brought to you by Amplitude. If you're setting up your analytics stack but not using Amplitude, what are you doing? Anyone can sell you analytics while Amplitude unlocks the power of your product and guides you every step of the way. Get the right data, ask the right questions, get the right answers and make growth happen. To get started with Amplitude for free, visit amplitude.com. Amplitude, power to your products. Patrick, welcome to the podcast.