Bootstrapping Towards $100MM and a $1.7B Valuation

0:28What would you be doing with that money? investment, and more. Our mission with the podcast is to help you, the founder, learn how to scale your SaaS, maintain your well-being, and navigate the complexities of this ever-changing industry. I'm your host, Alex Deema, and together we'll explore the good, the bad, and the ugly in the journey to SaaS success. Welcome to the SaaS Revolution Show. Ross Andrew-Piquette, CEO and Chairman of Maripost. Welcome, Ross. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Alex. Yeah, great to have you on the show. So first time on the SaaS Revolution show. We only met, I would say, just a couple of weeks ago, really, in Sweden.

1:07So usually I always ask the guests, the first question is like, who are you as a person? But actually, maybe we can share, like, how did we meet? And then how did we end up on the podcast? And then we can share, like, who is Ross? Yeah, absolutely. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how we met? Yeah, of course. So obviously it was great for Nathan Latka to bring us together, but Alex and I were lucky enough to share a dinner without ever having met each other very quickly and realized there was a lot we had in common. So very excited to join for today's discussion and certainly SaaS stock in the coming months.

1:44But we met down in Malmo, Sweden. So I happened to be a Swedish resident and figured I'd pop down there for what was it about 12 hours or maybe not 12 hours, 24 hours very quickly on my way to London. and was lucky enough to again spend some time with you. Yeah, no, no, it was cool. So like I think the shows, I think one of the benefits, I don't know if it's a hidden benefit or a very sort of open benefit of attending events is that, you know, a lot of serendipitous things, you know, can happen, right? And they're great places for that. So yeah, like I got the message from Nathan, like, hey, you know, my friend Ross is over.

2:21How about you guys, you know, connect and have dinner. I did what I usually do, right? And I looked for the number one rated steakhouse in the area, as I'm a little bit too much of a fan of steak. And we found this place and it was okay. We're not going to name names, but they certainly butchered one of the steaks. We asked for it. It came well done. But good evening, good conversation. And, you know, nice to kind of have that connection. And then obviously from that, you know, invitation to come on the podcast, after learning the story and then to obviously speak at Sastok later in the year, which is great.

2:59So we've got to thank Nathan for that. And speaking of which, I'm going to see him this weekend in Italy as we've got the Sastok Sounder member retreat. So certainly life is seemingly almost like back to normal. A lot of the jet sets are getting around and the travel. And, you know, it's fun. I definitely thought during COVID I wouldn't travel as much as I did pre-COVID. I kind of hope that will be the case, but I'm certainly seeing at the moment there's a bit of that rebound, the excitement of like travel, we can do it, where are we going next sort of thing. But yeah, looking forward to that.

3:36So Ross, we'll get to the typical first question about who you are. So who is Ross Andrew Paquette? I thought about that question a lot, actually. I feel like, you know, people immediately go into their time, you know, their life cycle, effectively their background, I suppose you could say. I worked here and I grew up there and all that kind of stuff. You know, and I was thinking about this just before I jumped on. I'm like, does, you know, hard-charging bootstrap founders sound right as to who I am? I'm not sure. Ibiza aficionado maybe would be another one. Lover of sea turtles. I don't know.

4:14Maybe those are all good examples of who I am. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the background, certainly, you know, both business. I'm from a very small town in northern Ontario, Canada. So zero technology coming out of there, mining and forestry were and still are, in some cases, the main industries. And family's still based out of there, even though I'm now in Sweden. So as we discussed previously, my partner is Swedish and I've spent the last probably four years in Europe, even though Maripos headquarters is still out of Toronto, Canada. And so, yeah, I've really just been, I mean, I wouldn't say enjoying COVID per se, but enjoying the time that I've been able to spend over in Europe and really kind of, you know, engage and enjoy the different cultures that are really coming together here.

5:05I think in Canada and certainly the US in particular, the diversity is there, but it's really not there in terms of a two-hour flight to Paris. And as you were just mentioning, a flight this week to Italy, which is, you know, what, three or four hours away. So it's been a really exciting journey over the past few years. And we'll certainly jump into the Maripos journey as well, I'm sure. Yeah, no, definitely. We're going to pick up on a couple of things there. So four years in Sweden, you said? Yeah, a mix of my partner and I met in Spain, coincidentally. So it was kind of Spain. And then I ended up in the Canada of Europe, which is Sweden, in my opinion.

5:43Yeah, I've not heard it described that, but I'm sure I'm sure it is. But how's your Swedish? Four years? Zero. 95 % of people in Sweden speak English. And so I run into the rare occasion. My partner's grandparents, as example, they don't speak any English, but it's a difficult language to learn. that's for sure. I mean, it's not Latin based. I do speak French as an example, and certainly English. You know, so Italian, Spanish, and so on are quite a bit easier than Swedish. And Ibiza aficionados, I remember the conversation recently, or I think very recently, I don't know why I said that in a kind of surprised tone.

6:25But recently, you spent about six months in Ibiza. And was that as a sabbatical? Were you working? I don't know. Could anyone work if you're in Ibiza? Tell us more about that. Yeah, that was actually in 2018. So I mean, every year, we definitely spend a good amount of time there. You know, even going through COVID, you're able to move back and forth in those summer months, at least within the EU. And yeah, I mean, some of the greatest memories of my life certainly happened in that first stint. I obviously met my partner there as well. So a lot of very exciting elements. But yeah, I would say I took a little bit of time off during the 2018.

7:06And now, you know, I keep my schedule throughout our time there, whether it's in, you know, May or August or whenever we happen to actually be there. But it's a phenomenal place. Where do you stay when you go to Ibiza? We have a home there. Okay. Whereabouts? I mean, like not the exact address, but what region? So we're right near Ibiza town, so near where the airport is. The island is very, very small, but we're in that area, I guess you could say. We're not on the west coast where San Antonio is or the north where Santa Aurelia is, as an example. Very cool. Very small, yeah. Yeah, I think we probably spoke.

7:44I've done a lot of time in Ibiza, but always with friends. This summer, I'm holidaying in Mallorca for the first time. and I'm bringing my mom and the mother-in-law as well, which will be fun. And then, yes, we're going to be there for about seven, eight days. And then I'm taking the mother-in-law and the family, of course, to Ibiza for three days. But it's going to be more family-oriented than the typical previous holiday. It really is that, though. I've been telling people this for a few years. I mean, my first time ever going there was in 2017. And, you know, I think the expectation is what it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, this major party environment.

8:31And a couple of times I'd have friends, you know, flying over to visit from Canada or elsewhere. And they're on the flight and like, are you sure? I think they had the idea that it was more of like the Vegas flight, you know, where people are pretty much out of control from, you know, lift off to landing. And, you know, my friends are on this one flight and they're like, are you sure we're going to the right place? There's a baby sitting next to me and family at seven on the other side and so on. And it really is that it's more of, you know, probably 80, 20, 80 percent families and people who, you know, are just visiting for holiday, you know, and 20 percent in kind of still that that party or nightclub area.

9:10Yeah. Yeah. I think I've been in that 20 percent mode for a while. But I go back and forth. I mix back and forth on demand. Yeah, good stuff. And so talking about the business, so Maripost, right? So you're the founder of Maripost. Why did you found it? What does it do? What's the story around that? Yeah, absolutely. So Maripost operates in effectively three or arguably four distinct areas as a single product. So we have the Commerce Cloud section, which is online, so e-commerce and retail, so point of sale as well. Marketing automation, which is how Maripost started back 10 years ago. And then help desk or service cloud, as it's called, which is effectively live chat, ticketing and so on.

9:57So it's all in one solution, effectively a CDP or B2C CRM. There's a ton of different terminology that can be used these days, but we are aggregating the core business needs of a mid-market e-commerce and or retailer into the solution. And so 10 years ago or so, or maybe even a little bit longer, founded the business. I'd come out of a sales role at another company and figured, you know what, I can build something out like this myself, have 10 customers, do a half a million in revenue and really just, you know, have this great lifestyle like business. and then about I guess you'd say two years you know after founding we went from 300 ,000 to 26 million in about 28 months with literally 12 or 15 people within the business at the 26 million so naturally a lot of work had to be done to backdate that scale but now we're 330 people on our way to just under 100 million in revenue this year and yeah with our sights set on a public listing in the years to come.

11:03Very cool. I mean, like, literally, that is very cool. Great, great numbers there. And I will come back in a bit around how you got from 300 ,000 to 26 million in 28 months, because I'm sure there's a lot of good stuff there. And so, but you're bootstrapped or venture backed? Yep, fully bootstrapped. So we're 100 % founder and employee owned. Yeah. Very, very cool. How much of the company do you own versus employees and shareholders? Between me and my partner, we're about 97%, give or take. Yeah. Very good. Very good. So then let's talk about these kind of the early days. So like, I guess kind of zero to 300 ,000 took three years.

11:53Was that right? Sort of the first two years of kind of that time we built out the platform and I had built some great relationships with various customers. So they were coming on board. And actually, funny enough, I almost shut down the business. I had originally hired on an individual I worked with in North America prior and it just wasn't working out. He would disappear for days on end and it just wasn't working. So effectively, and I was still working. Sorry, I had I had another job. and he, or sorry, realized, okay, this isn't going to work in this capacity. I'll just shut down the business.

12:28And funny, it was my parents, the least tech savvy individuals I know. And our product at the time, or still today, is built mainly in Ruby on Rails, which was a bit more obscure definitely 10 years ago, and especially in, say, the Toronto market or North American market. And they said, you know, why don't you look online? There's got to be somewhere. And so I met my now co-founder on Odesk. I can't remember which sorry Odesk which is now Upwork and he was the first person I talked to and just an exceptional engineer and individual and yeah and we've built the business in that direction ever since.

13:03Very cool and you said earlier about like initially you thought about okay I want to get you know the first 10 customers and have a bit of a lifestyle sort of business there how did you get those first 10 customers you know once you had the the technology kind of available yeah like well what what did you do the ones that were not friends and family i guess yeah so i mean there were people when i say people i knew i don't mean uh friends and family certainly i mean just i i was working in marketing automation before then yeah as soon as i sort of left the company and they were like well what are you you know what are you doing now you know are you going to work for another similar and you know i shared that and in fact we still have our very first customer on on on meripost and um uh which is great i gotta call them actually um but yeah just kind of built from from that small pool we we had maybe you know we're 300 000 we had maybe seven or eight clients uh that i had just i had done business with and and you know went to a couple of trade shows we made a couple of really smart uh bets like we we showed up at the uh i don't think they operate anymore but marketing sherpa's email summit uh and we were like the platinum or diamond or whatever sponsor.

14:15And it was just little me sitting at, in our booth and, but Maripost was everywhere. So it really, really worked out well. Like, and I don't think I've seen or heard of many companies with one employee or effectively two employees, you know, taking$80 ,000 sponsorship, you know, this is back 10 years ago when, when that was quite a bit of spend. And it really just worked out well. Like we, we brought on a lot of enterprise customers. The platform was always very strong. We kept innovating and developing and it really became a word of mouth growth strategy. Even now, a good 40 or 50 % of our revenue comes still from word of mouth.

14:51And obviously, that's not so systematic in terms of its approach, but it's definitely responsible for the growth of the business in the early stages. Yeah, I mean, definitely a bold move. I've never seen it in six and a half years of of SaaS stock with, you know, any company, probably not many companies under a hundred employees would spend that much money. So bold move, glad it paid off. But you wouldn't be here now if it hadn't paid off. Potentially. And so you're getting to 300 ,000. So that kind of, that, that makes sense. You go to the seven or eight sort of like clients that got there, you knew them previously, you know, do a few other things, but then you got to 26 million in 28 months yeah what would you say you come a couple of the kind of like the big things that you did to really kind of transition because that's that's huge growth right especially for bootstrap company um so really great velocity yeah so yeah we will in when you say what do we do do you mean in terms of like how did we acquire the customers or how did we yeah well yeah like what were some of the strategic things and whether it was customer acquisition or like some, I don't know, some hires or moving.

16:04It was really a lot of hardware. We, at the time I had this clearly unproven or unrealistic strategy in mind that Ross would continue to sell the product and be that, that piece. And the business would sort of support all of the layers around him. So we had a support team and some client success individuals come in and we had a couple marketing people, but I was still doing every deal from, you know, relative start to finish. So we didn't follow any of the, you know, typical playbooks of, okay, at 5 million, you know, have these people VP sales, VP, you know, then at 10 million do this, we really grew dramatically, and very quickly in that regard.

16:44And we had about, it would have been about 200 or over 200 customers from literally, you know, single digit in that timeframe. So it was a lot of just just hard work. And yeah, and just a close proximity. Granted, I'll still say this today, even with the, you know, kind of 15, 18 hour days that were occurring back then, that was the most exciting time in the business because we were closing new customers every day. We were servicing them. Everything was, you know, was exciting from a product and growth perspective. And granted, we still have that today. I'm just further removed from those layers, but we didn't do anything that we should have done.

17:22And it's funny, you know, you and I, of course, both know Michael Lidd, who's on our advisory board from Vidyard. And he's always baffled, firstly, that we've gotten to where we are, you know, with some of this background. But two, when him and I spent a lot of time looking at the question you had, which was, you know, what infrastructure did you put in? What systems did you put in? You know, how are you handling ticket routing and subject matter experts? And how are you driving sales pipeline? We didn't have any of that. It was embarrassing, almost in a way to say it out loud, but still were able to get there.

17:58Very cool. Going against the grain there. Actually, yesterday I just shared with the SaaS.com founder members, you know, presentation around company operating systems. And, you know, for us, I think for many companies, certainly in the early years, they don't have those operating systems, things like EOS or the business processes and things to help you kind of scale in place. And I think for us, it was about four years until I kind of really started to look at implementing all of that. We're just doing some of that stuff now. And it's tough. It's a lot harder to do it now. So whatever I'm giving advice that I myself didn't follow, I'm certainly referencing, you know, how much harder it is to do later than in the early stage.

18:47Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've seen some companies literally do it in the first year. I think Hotjar is a good example. I'm pretty sure they, you know, implemented these sort of things, you know, the first year and within two years got$10 million in revenue, kind of like bootstrapped. And I think, you know, that's a lot to say for, you know, doing something like that and doing it early and having the foresight to do it, which we didn't have. And many people don't. So you mentioned that. So you've got 97 % of the business, you're bootstrapped, but you did have investors at some point. So tell us about the investors, why you took money and what's happened to them?

19:28Where are they now? Yeah, it was it was I mean, at the time, it was pretty logical, right? So this was 2016. So six years ago, or closer to seven now feels like an eternity. And Maripost, obviously, as we shared, had sort of skipped a couple steps in terms of the growth, as in by the time the VCP world had actually heard about us, we weren't, you know, five, six million in revenue, we were this, you know, 26 million in revenue kind of thing. And so, you know, there was probably about 120, 130, you know, parties who we met with, you know, all the way from the large insights, TAs of the world down to, you know, the more, you know, 100 million, 200 million sized funds.

20:09And they were a really great group and very nice, but philosophically very different, right? For the same reasons that Merrill Post is very different. You know, we just aren't following the model of, you know, kind of grow at all costs. And, you know, it really just, it didn't go into the direction I think anybody had planned. And thankfully, the investment was an all secondary round. So we basically just took all the money, put it into an investment account. Obviously we had to pay tax, which was unfortunate. But, you know, over the next couple of years, you know, growth had unfortunately slowed during those years.

20:44And then we realized this wasn't, you know, really going to work and it was going to get, you know, pretty uncomfortable for everybody pretty quickly. And so, you know, as it came down to it, I just said, you know what, I'll buy the shares back and we go on our separate paths and, you know, and we're all the better for it. And so, you know, their firms and funds are still still well on their way. And they've made great investments, you know, as I've seen and I wish them the best, that's for sure. But at the time, it definitely wasn't for us. I mean, I think the landscape between today, let's say, and back then has certainly changed dramatically.

21:24I mean, there's pros and cons when it comes to who's founder friendly, who isn't. I'm not saying they were or weren't. But it's just a different dynamic. And I think it was a great learning. It was a very expensive learning experience for myself, but it was still a great learning experience to go through just the same. But yeah, but no more. I imagine obviously given you the great numbers that you have, are you still getting, or do you get VCs on a regular basis kind of every day? And what do you do? Do you ignore? Do you respond politely? It depends on who they are. I mean, kind of what I mentioned.

22:01So, you know, there are a few firms that I have a lot of, you know, sort of respect for in terms of what they have done with founders. And they're really, again, like the philosophical approach. And without naming anybody, you know, there are a handful or probably quite a bit more where they're very focused on the product that you're building. They're not signing up for the financials, let's say. I mean, obviously, that's very important, but they're signing up for the vision and the product is in, you know, a few of my friends have worked with or counterparts have worked with the same firms like every meeting we have, if we're having a bad month or bad quarter or whatever, nobody ever wants that is just keep focusing on the product, just keep focusing on the product.

22:42And I think that's, you know, that's a little bit more conducive to the success you're seeing, you know, maybe with some of these large firms, if I if I mentioned their names, but I'm sure you can guess. As in, they're far more successful with that strategy than with the, OK, we had a bad year, we had a bad couple of years, let's find a way to kick so and so out of their company. And I don't think we hear enough of those stories. So I have a lot of, you know, bias in that regard, obviously. makes sense and so you mentioned that you're you're on your way uh to 100 million uh this year um can you share again maybe like a couple of things or a high level plan or what you're doing you know to get to 100 million yeah i mean for us it's all about i mean for a lot of companies it's all about execution but we don't have any confusion about our strategy about who we want to be about the product that we're building about the let's call it the guardrails or bookends that we're building towards.

23:36For us, it's a very clear path. And it's really just about executing on each milestone that unlocks, you know, new, maybe not new revenue streams, not the right way to put it, but new revenue streams, or additional value, or the ability to cross sell different areas of the platform that we have that we aren't doing today. And that's really one of the interesting components is even with our current customer base, we have over 300, around$350 million worth of subscription revenue available to us. We just have to go through the motions of cross-selling and migrating and bringing customers into the overall, or these new areas of the platform, is what I'm describing.

24:13And that's all in addition to our new customer growth. I remember you saying when we had dinner, and also I think I've seen it online in an article that came out recently, that the company is valued at$1.7 billion at the moment. Is that right? right yeah yeah yeah how did you get to the the 1.7 billion uh valuation what what was the the thing that kind of you know gave you the the valuation obviously congrats on that that's thank you but uh but yeah how did you get there yeah so we did a um uh second it's kind of a it's an it's an odd topic to discuss publicly but we did sort of a actually i'll just tell what we're doing so in in typical maripost fashion we're trying to do something that i personally haven't seen done elsewhere.

25:02But I think it's an extremely valuable strategy, which is instead of, well, one, there was step one was I've always wanted to sort of share in the success of Maripost with our partners, our customers, you know, friends and family and so on and so forth. And a lot of the network that the company has, you know, across the globe, many of the same people that you and I know mutually. And while kicking off that process, given the valuation is, of course, getting very high and in many regards are high. And when I started this off, I want to make $500 ,000. So you can imagine we're quite far away from that.

25:38And as that process really unfolded, we started to have individuals from Australia, from New Zealand, from Canada, US, from throughout Europe, from Asia, frankly, from every corner of the globe, who are very interested in this, because they had heard about, you know, not about the process itself, but about it from somebody. And as we started bringing in these individuals into the fold, it really started to build out more of a community. And when I say community, I'm referring just to the fact that it's different if you were to have, you know, one or five, six, seven, even VCs coming into one process or even one of them to having 250 or so individuals or individuals, even from firms.

26:18There's a lot of people doing that in our process to to come together and really have this overall vested interest in the success of Maripos. So right now we're about half the way through that process. And there's no shortage. It's literally just processing paperwork. But effectively or arguably what it should be looked at is a small secondary round. Sorry, small comparative evaluation. Very cool. As you say, it's not that common. But interesting to see things like that being done. As you said, you haven't really kind of taken the common path in many things. Yeah. But yeah, congrats. You see a bootstrap company that's got 97 % ownership of the founders.

27:03That's got$1.7 billion valuation. That's doing things like what you're doing in terms of getting the community involved in getting ownership in the business. So really great to see and to be able to kind of share those stories for bootstrap founders that are listening, for those that are, you know, even venture-backed or on the path and as well, just to kind of hear, you know, stories like this. And what about like, maybe like some of the most challenging parts of the job for you or like that either have been over time or maybe currently are like in your role? What are the challenges that you face or have faced?

27:42I mean, I'll start in the order of the amount of pain each one gives me. The first and foremost, I mean, it's definitely the and I think everybody's struggling with this, but just the people side of things right now, right in this sort of pre and post COVID world and, you know, expectations and markets, you know, employment markets and hiring and and expectation management and so on. I think that's hands down the most difficult piece, especially given the amount of people we have. We'll be at about 350 by the end of the month. You know, it was quite a bit different than when we were 50. And I spend actually a fair amount of time talking about that.

28:18We, you know, as you know, we did two acquisitions over the past two years through COVID. We're doing actually a third small one literally today closes. So I'll share more about that as a follow up. But going through those motions of, you know, 50 people to 100 people to 150 and so on and so forth, you know, that becomes really difficult at scale. And it relates to the second comment, which is what we were discussing before, just the system side of things, the infrastructure side of things that we, you know, didn't put in place years ago. And, you know, at some stages, didn't have the right people to know to put those in place, right.