[HN Gopher] Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
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Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
Hello HN, I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing
platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 Today, I sold the
company to a private equity firm for $200mn. It's covered on
TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/23/everstone-acquires-
bootstr... I was a 22 year old fresh graduate when I launched VWO
on HN and got initial users. Feedback from people like @patio11
helped me get to PMF. And now, 15 years later,
"site:ycombinator.com" is what I appended when I wanted to search
for advice on what to keep in mind while selling my company. Thank
you HN for sharing inspiration and wisdom all along. I honestly
don't think I would have been an entrepreneur had it not been for
hacker news. Every single day, HN is the first website I open! I'm
feeling very grateful towards the community. Thanks @dang, and
thank you Paul Graham for your essays and for creating this
beautiful corner of the internet!
Author : paraschopra
Score : 2109 points
Date : 2025-01-23 17:58 UTC (1 days ago)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Congrats on the successful exit and your journey to it!
| arey_abhishek wrote:
| Congratulations! This is such a great story. I've followed you
| for years and your success is inspiring
| ignoramous wrote:
| Great run, Paras!
|
| If I may:
|
| - Did VWO ever apply to YC?
|
| - Do you foresee PE asset stripping (crashing & burning) VWO
| eventually?
|
| - What's next (5y time period)?
|
| Thanks.
| paraschopra wrote:
| - No, never applied to YC.
|
| - Not expecting this to happen
|
| - I plan to explore starting a fundamental AI lab from India
| (China has Deepseek, US has OpenAI and Anthropic, Japan has
| Sakana - India doesn't have one yet!)
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _explore starting a fundamental AI lab from India_
|
| I saw the back & forth between you and Aravind (pplx.ai) on
| Twitter. Impactful if you'd go down the FOSS route [0]. How
| soon are you expecting to start working on this? Are you
| hiring?
|
| [0] I co-develop FOSS security tools for Android and
| considering building more to counter fraud (local languages
| is a barrier): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42785568
| srirangr wrote:
| Congrats Paras! Great to see a bootstrapped success story from
| someone that I have been following for over a decade. Kudos!
| guynamedloren wrote:
| Incredible. Congrats, enjoy the fruits of your hard work!
| duxup wrote:
| Congratulations.
|
| I'm curious... what do people do after something like this?
|
| Vacation?
| nico wrote:
| "I am rich and I have no idea what to do"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873
| dylan604 wrote:
| I would hope some time off is possible, but I could totally see
| myself self-funding the next thing immediately after that time
| off. I'm guessing the bootstrapping types would get bored and
| look for the next thing
| klik99 wrote:
| I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year
| after they were acquired for 5.9b - it's a little different
| since he wasn't involved with the sale, but he was still
| processing the insane amount of money he had. A year on he
| hadn't moved out of his small apartment, still contracted,
| still used the same cheap phone, and hadn't started investing
| beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc. it struck me as
| the smartest move, take your time to come up with a plan and
| don't just dive into recklessly spending it.
|
| I also know a founder couple I was close friends with who had a
| sizeable exit, who moved to Costa Rica where they could spend
| little and focus on writing, a side interest that ended up
| leading to their next company.
|
| I find it's really interesting how people act when the
| financial pressure gets suddenly removed.
| criddell wrote:
| > I find it's really interesting how people act when the
| financial pressure gets suddenly removed.
|
| It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people
| suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding
| contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford to
| retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty
| sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do.
|
| When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy
| a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have
| with that money. Lots of it would be spent on hiring experts
| to teach me things.
| mrsilencedogood wrote:
| Imo, it's mostly because our brains are still hunter-
| gatherer brains. While things like language acquisition and
| culture-instilling do fundamentally change us, our base
| hardware is still pre-currency pre-agriculture (pre-pretty-
| much-everything) hunter-gatherer. In Sapiens, it's noted
| that if a homo sapiens from 100k years ago ended up on an
| autopsy table in the modern day, you would never know
| anything was amiss anatomically. You might notice the teeth
| are unusually straight and free of decay (pre-grain diet,
| with huge amounts of chewing strengthening the jaw and
| allowing teeth to properly align), well-trained body with
| low body fat, and similarly free of many of the scourges of
| our modern diet and lifestyles). But that's it.
|
| So, people suddenly get taken out of "the grind" which was
| their only approximation of the drive-reward cycle that
| their brain depends on. So what now? Unfortunately, they've
| been freed to confront man's ultimate foe: philosophy. And
| lots of people aren't cut out or ready for that. (One could
| even say most philosophers aren't, given how much many of
| them suffered).
| conductr wrote:
| As somewhat of a counterpoint, my experience was we often
| romanticize these things that we'd like to do if only we
| had the time/money/etc. But sometimes you'll find once you
| do have the opportunity to explore those things, it's not
| as interesting as we had hoped. It might keep you busy for
| a year or so, but then boredom and lack of fulfillment rear
| their head again. I think this is why serial
| entrepreneurship is a pretty common thing.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| > When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually
| buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could
| have with that money.
|
| I buy lotto tickets for the same reason! Their expected
| value is very low but the maximum value is thought-
| provoking. For me, $50k would be life-changing. One billion
| is hard to imagine.
| applied_heat wrote:
| What would you do with $50k that would make such a
| difference in your life?
| Dansvidania wrote:
| I'd buy a house, myself..
| WJW wrote:
| For 50k?
| tasuki wrote:
| Yes why not. Hell, there are places in the world where
| you can buy _whole villages_ for $50k!
| 20after4 wrote:
| Found a place in a rural part of Missouri for $60k at the
| end of 2019. Everything has more than doubled in value
| since then. I had no idea what was about to happen when I
| signed that paper... but I'm sure glad I didn't wait even
| a few months. Literally moved in February 2020 just in
| time to get _really_ familiar with the new surroundings.
| Dansvidania wrote:
| For just a few k more. But I should not that I don't live
| in the us.
| projektfu wrote:
| Decent new houses are USD 30k in Natal, RN, Brazil. More
| like USD 100k for beachfront property.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 50k is enough to comfortably live on for a year even in
| Germany, much more so in other countries. Allows you to
| completely change perspectives or to pivot your entire
| career.
| ge96 wrote:
| Sadly for me it'd pay half my debt off
|
| edit: with that in mind, leanfire is on my mind since I'm
| single/don't actually need much to live
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| It feels strange to write about this, but resolving a
| health issue, paying off debt, and escaping the nerve-
| wracking cycle of short-term, low-paying gigs would be
| life-changing. I am the sole breadwinner, working 50-60
| hours a week just to stay afloat, so I don't have the
| time to prepare for interviews and pursue a stable
| career.
|
| There are many people like me.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Likely drowning in debt.
|
| When you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, even just $10K
| in credit card debt at 30% is enough to keep you down.
| ~$250/month merely pays the interest.
|
| Maybe there's medical stuff that needs to get done. Maybe
| the car needs fixing. Maybe you haven't gone on vacation
| in YEARS and it's taking a huge toll on mental health. I
| mean, consider how many people work jobs that don't offer
| ANY PTO, so even going on a stay-cation costs money due
| to lost wages.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| I know someone who paid off their credit card debt with
| an inheritance of roughly that size. It completely
| changed their outlook on life. Before every month was a
| struggle to just stay on top of the credit cards. Now
| they are debt-free and are actually able to save a bit of
| money every month. And for example able to go eat out
| without struggle.
|
| Mind you by hn standards this is on a miniscule income.
| Still, many people are struggling hard and a windfall
| like this can make a huge difference in quality of life.
| csomar wrote:
| I'd use that money to pay for private math lessons.
| duxup wrote:
| Agreed, I think I could find things to dedicate my time to
| that would be fulfilling. I'm not surprised, but maybe I do
| wonder what is in those folks lives who can't find
| something.
|
| Having said that ... I'm also not in that situation, you
| never know.
| servercobra wrote:
| I buy lotto tickets because my friends do a pool. I'm not
| sure I'd be happy with the money, but I am very sure I'd be
| very unhappy if I was a schmuck who didn't put in a very
| small amount (to me) of money to be in the pool. I consider
| it insurance more than anything!
| sky2224 wrote:
| It's almost analogous to having a video game totally
| completed for you in a way. Everything is "done" for you
| essentially since you just buy your way out of problems at
| that point.
|
| Before coming into that amount of money, you can be
| distracted by the survival aspects of living in society
| where you're just trying to make money and live
| comfortably. There isn't any necessity to have to figure
| out what you truly want out of life or what your passions
| are.
|
| Once you do have money, now you have to face that. You have
| to truly find who you are. Otherwise, you're depressed or
| you go and blow all the money on things to distract you
| from finding who you are.
| criddell wrote:
| > There isn't any necessity to have to figure out what
| you truly want out of life or what your passions are.
|
| I most certainly don't have life figured out and I'm not
| particularly passionate about much but I do know as a 54
| year old, I'm on the downward side of this mountain and
| there's so many things that are interesting to me. I'd
| love nothing more than to be a full time dilettante,
| living my life quarter-by-quarter, exploring a new topic
| every 3 months.
|
| I guess what I'm really wondering is how some people with
| more money than they will ever need don't wake up in the
| morning excited to work on some topic they find
| interesting. A certain portion are just depressed or
| dealing with some other mental illness, but isn't the
| typical person interested in lots of stuff that they
| don't pursue due to life getting in the way?
| 9rx wrote:
| _> isn 't the typical person interested in lots of stuff_
|
| They might be, but is the typical person interested in
| doing it alone? Everyone else still has their lives
| getting in the way. They can't realistically skip going
| to work because you want to spend time with them. While
| some people are comfortable exploring life by themselves,
| I suspect the typical person is not.
|
| You could use that newfound wealth to buy friends, but
| then you're effectively back to managing a business
| again, assuming business is the source of money per the
| grander discussion here. If that is what drives you, you
| are apt to do everything you can to avoid the exit in the
| first place and thus not ending up in this situation.
| Like Zuckerberg once said, if he sold Facebook he would
| focus on building another tech company and therefore
| there is no point in selling the one he already has.
|
| Even still, if you do go down that road, and you want
| people of quality rather than grifters trying to scam
| you, to fill that role you are going to need some
| semblance of marketable goals for them to get behind. _"
| Played friend for Richie Rich"_ doesn't advance their
| career or look good on a resume. They don't have the
| luxury of not having to worry about that kind of thing.
| Now you are truly back where you started, which, again,
| questions why walk away in the first place?
|
| It might not be impossible to find something to keep you
| going, but it is easy to see how it could be really hard.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people
| suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding
| contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford
| to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm
| pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do.
|
| Different goals. If your goal is pursuing hobbies or a
| certain lifestyle, work is a means to achieve that. Getting
| money just lets you skip the work part.
|
| Their goal is creating a successful business. Having money
| and leaving the business means now they have no goal.
| sevensor wrote:
| Talk to some retired people. The loss of identity can hit
| you right in the ego. You might think retirement sounds
| great, but I've known several people who thought that, and
| then un-retired. Other people seem to do just fine; I'm not
| sure if it's temperament or something else. And then again,
| there are some people who just fade away...
| WA wrote:
| > If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a
| heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things
| I want to do.
|
| You probably underestimate the little voice that will show
| up at some point, aksing _what is the point in doing that
| thing?_
| thwarted wrote:
| > _I met someone who was an early employee at King about a
| year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it's a little
| different since he wasn't involved with the sale, but he was
| still processing the insane amount of money he had_
|
| Is there a word missing in this? How did they join after
| acquisition and have a meaningful financial windfall? And
| being an early employee?
| hapidjus wrote:
| They met a year after.
| klik99 wrote:
| It's very ambiguously phrased in multiple ways because I
| don't edit my HN posts, but it is technically correct, just
| vague! He was one of the first employees at King, and I met
| him a year after King was acquired. The "they" in "after
| they were acquired" is ambiguous which I think led to your
| confusion.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow%
| 3B_...
|
| Linked from the above:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanaclasis
| nojvek wrote:
| > hadn't started investing beyond just the normal mutual
| funds/bonds/etc
|
| You'd be surprised how far you get ahead with S&P 500 +
| Treasury inflation adjusted securities.
|
| It's really hard to beat S&P500. Most funds after fees don't
| beat it. If S&P500 goes to shit, inflation adjusted
| securities give you guaranteed returns.
|
| The richest IMO people are those who live a modest lifestyle
| only from their interest, never having to touch the
| principle. Maximizing who and what they spend their time on.
| klik99 wrote:
| Yeah I didn't mean to talk that down, it's just the most
| no-brainer thing to do. As in, it's so obviously a good
| idea that any good portfolio will have a chunk devoted to
| that.
| Take8435 wrote:
| > I find it's really interesting how people act when the
| financial pressure gets suddenly removed.
|
| Agreed. It should happen to more & more people.
| gregschlom wrote:
| I have a couple of friends in this exact situation. In their
| mid-thirties, no kids. They bought a very very nice house in
| the mountains after their startup got acquired, and spend most
| of their time travelling around the world. It's pretty awesome.
| jborden13 wrote:
| I bought a steel bike, grabbed my hammock, and went on a 4 day
| 250 mile solo adventure through the Texas hill country.
|
| Riding through empty valleys at sunset with a herd of deer
| pacing alongisde me was enough to break me into tears. It's
| what I needed to move on.
| duxup wrote:
| It is interesting how many stories in a way involve running
| or moving away from the lifestyle that ... bought them a new
| lifestyle.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| _Well, you don 't need a million dollars to do nothing,
| man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit._
| sebmellen wrote:
| There is a luxury class at both ends of the economic
| spectrum, as Veblen observed.
| tasuki wrote:
| *leisure, I suppose. I'd love to read more on that. Is
| that from "The Theory of the Leisure Class"?
| klik99 wrote:
| I don't remember that particular observation being in the
| book since it's very much about the upper class, but that
| book is amazing. I used to keep an rss feed of new
| project gutenberg books and when that popped up I read it
| just based on the name and was amazed how pertinent it
| was a hundred years later. I haven't read anything else
| by him, but that one is absolutely worth it.
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833
|
| Also since it was written when the vestiages of european
| feudal system still had some tiny amount of power, some
| of the observations about lords who owned massive estates
| but had no money and would refuse to take on any work,
| considering it "beneath them" while they starved was
| fascinating. It's both of it's time and timeless
| sebmellen wrote:
| Thank you for correcting. I can no longer edit the parent
| comment and was sleep deprived while writing it.
|
| But yes!
| taneq wrote:
| The trick is to attain leisure while also having the
| resources to live safely and comfortably.
| tasuki wrote:
| Is it? I have friends who have very little money. Ok,
| they live safely, but not comfortably by any stretch.
| They value their leisure and live a good life.
|
| I'm also friends with people who became very rich. In
| their own ways, they all continue working hard.
| taneq wrote:
| > Ok, they live safely, but not comfortably by any
| stretch.
|
| > They value their leisure and live a good life.
|
| There's an inherent contradiction here unless you believe
| you can live a 'good life' (which I would expect to be
| free from excessive discomfort?) while also living 'not
| comfortably by any stretch'.
|
| You also have to consider what 'safely' means here. Sure,
| it means walls and a door so that you don't freeze to
| death or get eaten by dingoes or (insert local hazard
| here), but beyond the immediate, it also means having
| resources to obtain medical aid if required, ensure food
| supply and other necessities even in the face of
| unforeseen circumstances, etc.
|
| It's possible to 'live a good life' with no resources
| while everything goes in your favour but it rapidly gets
| awful if that changes.
|
| On your second point, I'd imagine that the people who
| became very rich did so because they're constitutionally
| unable to just relax and coast.
| mewmew wrote:
| Haha, I almost never reply on HN. But the Office Space
| ref made my day <3
| technol0gic wrote:
| my favorite quote in the whole movie
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I celebrate the [movie's] entire catalog
| Grosvenor wrote:
| Yeah but if you had a million dollars you could do two
| chicks at the same time.
|
| and if you were a millionaire, I bet you could hook that
| up. Chicks dig dudes with money.
| jborden13 wrote:
| When something consumes you so rabidly and ferociously for
| so long, and then is just gone (poof), it leaves you
| searching. Searching for recovery and meaning.
|
| It's 4 years later, and I'm still searching...
| csallen wrote:
| My discovery having gone through something similar: If
| something made you happy and gave you purpose before, it
| probably will again. So just do it again.
|
| The second time around, you may discover that finding
| success, getting rich, etc., wasn't actually the reason
| you were doing it.
| jborden13 wrote:
| Getting rich was never the reason. I was a solo
| bootstrapper who rarely got paid for a decade+. If it was
| about the $ I would've dipped week one of the startup.
|
| My issue is product market fit. I've been building
| different ideas for the past few years, but traction has
| eluded me.
| jacob_rezi wrote:
| Zuckerberg said something along the lines of if he would
| have sold facebook, he would have gone on to build
| another facebook Is that how you feel? Ive spent the past
| 10 years building my company, I dont feel like another
| venture could compare (for now)
| jborden13 wrote:
| I wouldn't, at least not in its current incarnation. I
| started mine in 2008, after a 2007 Supreme Court
| decision. For cpg brands, we built a SaaS for e-commerce
| dealer base compliance and management.
|
| Ultimately, because competition eventually grew like
| crazy, I don't think the market timing is worthy of
| trying to rebuild it at this point. Maybe some analog for
| AI instead of e-commerce.
|
| Oddly, after looking at your profile, it looks like I've
| been building the last few years in the same space as
| you. But product market fit has been elusive.
| JALTU wrote:
| Steel is real. And comes in colors other than black! :)
| lobsterthief wrote:
| Even stainless steel ;)
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Did you read Caro's books on Lyndon Johnson yet? If you have
| not, stop what you are doing and read them, especially the
| first two. He spends a lot of time talking about Hill
| Country. I suspect you will find them very interesting having
| spent so much time there.
| samiv wrote:
| Just because the company was sold for a bunch of money doesn't
| mean the people (yes even the founders) got a huge payout.
| Liquidation preference and other schemes can make sure that
| when the investors get their money there's nothing to left to
| share between other share holders including the founders.
|
| (Not saying that this is the case here, just pointing that out)
|
| EDIT: As some are already pointing out, yes the title says
| "bootstrapped". I missed that initially, so apologies.
| Klonoar wrote:
| This particular OP notes they were bootstrapped. That term
| might mean any number of things here, but I would imagine
| they had less exposure to losing out.
|
| Or at least, I hope they did. What a fantastic win for them.
| fourseventy wrote:
| The title of this post literally says "bootstrapped"
| robryan wrote:
| To note as well the Techcrunch article specifically says 71%
| ownership.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I had this 25 years ago when I was 25; the amount was lower but
| it was enough to never do anything ever again. I went hiking,
| got 1 billion ideas during walking for new companies and
| products, so started making some of them. Still am.
| joering2 wrote:
| please share if there is something you can show to public.
| soheil wrote:
| Typically PE deals require the founders to very much stay
| involved in the daily operations of the business unless they
| are near retirement age and that is the primary motive they are
| selling in the first place.
| paraschopra wrote:
| I'll be involved as a director on the board, but won't have
| operational involvement.
| amrrs wrote:
| He is already running a hacker house in bangalore with cohorts
| of researchers and practiontioners getting together -
| https://turingsdream.co/
|
| so probably it's picking one of those ideas or investing in it!
| mooreds wrote:
| I know one founder that worked a few days a week at the company
| and took a lot of vacations.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Well, I posted a thank you note on HN and went to sleep!
|
| I was financially independent even before this sale (benefit of
| running a bootstrapped company is that it _has_ to be
| profitable). Moreover, I had been gradually reducing my
| operational involvement in the company for years by grooming
| the team.
|
| So, day to day, not much changes.
|
| But I do have a nice chunk to do crazy-ass experiments in
| future, which I fully intend to do.
| zafka wrote:
| Congratulations Paras!! When I first started this post I was
| going to comment: Congratulations on your overnight success!!
| but held off :) Anyhow, I love that your plan is to do crazy
| ass experiments. I hope to read about them in the near
| future. I plan to do similar things, albeit with a slightly
| smaller budget-but sometime constraints can make you more
| creative. All the best!!!
| tikkun wrote:
| Awesome. For others, I see that Paras is now running
| https://turingsdream.co/ "an AI hackhouse running a six-week
| residency for coders and researchers who're interested in AI. The
| hackhouse is in Bangalore, India and you can join it either in-
| person, or in a hybrid fashion."
| paraschopra wrote:
| Thanks for linking it here.
|
| If there are any AI researchers or engineers in Bangalore/India
| lurking here, please consider applying.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I attended Paras'a talk at the last graduation day for the
| residency. I'm amazed at how he was able to do all that, while
| dealing with the acquisition due diligence.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Off to /r/fatfire for you
| rikthevik wrote:
| Big congratulations!
| amendegree wrote:
| So happy for you! Great job on growing to 50mil! I'm curious how
| this process got started, did you approach them or did they reach
| out? Are you still gonna be involved day to day, or are you
| taking a much deserved break?
| paraschopra wrote:
| I had been reducing my day to day involvement for a few years,
| and then we hired an investment banker who drove the process. I
| won't be involved day to day anymore.
| croes wrote:
| Is it the final goal to get acquired?
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Perhaps we can change the goals if death wasn't going to
| acquire us all.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| Congratulations to you! It's great to see the hard work coming to
| fruition.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| I really appreciate this post, especially after some of the
| recent ones about how we're in a startup winter. I'm
| bootstrapping a project on the side (although I acquired it as a
| POC, didn't build from scratch), and whether it's "realistic" or
| not, stories like this are still inspiring. Thank you!
| paraschopra wrote:
| Good luck!
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Congrats! Since it seems you're based in India, I hope you can
| continue to invest in other promising Indian startups in the
| coming years!
| paraschopra wrote:
| Yes, I'm running https://turingsdream.co and intend to do a lot
| more of helping others going forward.
| klik99 wrote:
| Congratulations!
| sandeep_kamble wrote:
| Congratulations Paras, you made it! Looking forward to your next
| gig!
| nexarithm wrote:
| Are you planning to write blog post of the journey? It is always
| joyful to read about process and details about such acquisitions.
| I remember couple shared in HN and got lots of interest such as
| waze.
|
| Congratulations!
| paraschopra wrote:
| What would you like to know about the process?
| rexreed wrote:
| I'd love to learn about PMF and which posts from HN were most
| helpful. Even a few pointers in the thread here would be
| awesome.
| paraschopra wrote:
| I've written a lot of my lessons here:
| https://invertedpassion.com/free-book-mental-models-for-
| star...
| rexreed wrote:
| This is great, thanks both for writing these down and
| sharing!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Your post https://invertedpassion.com/your-30-second-
| pitch-shouldnt-be... applies not just to business but to
| life in general. Talking about someone else and focusing
| on what they want is how to make friends (and other
| benefits).
|
| I really like your site. It's kind of the inverse of pg:
| not really essays, but still focused and numerous, even
| if short. It manages to be general without being shallow:
| there are so many interesting topics that it's hard not
| to get pulled in, which for me was reminiscent of
| stumbling on pg's essays in 2007.
|
| Thanks!
| nullderef wrote:
| Anything other than programming would be super helpful. There
| are a lot of software engineers who are able to build great
| products. Also knowing how to market and sell them is where
| only a few shine.
| paraschopra wrote:
| I've written a lot of my lessons here:
| https://invertedpassion.com/free-book-mental-models-for-
| star...
| handfuloflight wrote:
| Congratulations! Did you reach out or did they?
| phtrivier wrote:
| Good for you ! Are you completely exiting the company, or will
| you still run the product, if only in part ? Are you leaving a
| team behind ?
|
| I'm very curious about how to approach such a moment. There are
| so many horror stories where an acquisition ends up being "bad
| news" for teams and users alike - I hope this won't be the case
| here !
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| linked TC story says "owned 70%... retaining a small ownership"
| speakfreely wrote:
| It's very common in transactions of this size that the seller
| "rolls" some equity, I.e. retains some ownership moving
| forward. The buyer likes this because it theoretically keeps
| them invested in the future of the company and the seller
| potentially gets a second bite when the PE firm flips the
| business.
| adeptima wrote:
| Inspiration for all of us. Congrats!
| sainib wrote:
| Congratulations Paras! Great milestone. Please share more details
| for your journey and learnings as a blog post.
| refrigerator wrote:
| Amazing, congrats man!!
| devops000 wrote:
| Could you share your Revenue and EBITDA of last 3 years? I am
| interested to understand multiplies. Did you sell all-cash or 51%
| cash + other?
| packetslave wrote:
| what an intrusive, nosy question!
| wnolens wrote:
| I mean.. the guy posted on a public forum "I just made
| $142M!"
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Some founders are very open about these things. It doesn't
| hurt to ask. They might even have a public blog about they
| can link to.
| myflash13 wrote:
| Wow, what an inspiring story? Care to share any stats, such as
| team size, when you hit your first ARR milestones, or anything
| else?
| ignoramous wrote:
| Today, we're a team of 250+ people and seen that initial "Show
| HN" grow into a $20mn+ bootstrapped business (no VC funding).
| If anyone's interested in reading more, I've blogged this
| journey (from launch to now) on our website [0]
|
| from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 (2020)
|
| [0] clicky: https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/
| sureglymop wrote:
| I checked out the explainer video from 15 years ago in the
| linked blog post. It's crazy but this would still get me
| interested even today! Wow.
| paraschopra wrote:
| We hit our first million in 18 months when we were ~10 (I
| think).
|
| My first milestone was $1000 (my salary before starting
| Wingify). The first month I launched, made $4000 and it kept
| doubling from there for a while.
|
| I remember being glued to the customer and revenue chart for
| the first few years. I had even coded a small utility to make a
| small ka-ching sound on my laptop whenever we get a new
| customer :)
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Ha ha, I had coded the same kind of utility in 2007 in my
| first business, to send me an SMS whenever there was a
| purchase. (and my phone was set up to go "ka-ching!" for
| SMSes from that number)
|
| Turns out I had a bug in my code, and I got a text every time
| someone _visited_ the page, which meant at the end of launch
| day I had lost money by paying more in SMS fees than I made
| in sales for the day!
| dang wrote:
| I put this post in the second-chance pool* as soon as I found out
| about it, but given that the startup is India, I think Paras
| might also be, in which case he may be offline for a while!
| (Edit: and will have rather a lot of responses waiting for him
| when that changes...)
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
| paraschopra wrote:
| Yes, thank you! I was indeed sleeping and just woke up.
| firefoxd wrote:
| My employer picked vwo over my own custom in house ab testing
| tool [0]. I was so pissed!
|
| Congrats, yours was the better tool.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23471050
| dang wrote:
| Here's that earlier thread - thanks for pointing it out!
|
| _Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 - June 2020 (128
| comments)
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's quite amusing that the same person is the top comment in
| both threads
| sbene970 wrote:
| Almost! It's 'firefoxd' vs 'foxfired', lol
|
| Edit: Ah no, you're right, seems he made a second account.
| jcheng wrote:
| There's no higher praise than "I built my own; yours was
| better"!
| kinderjaje wrote:
| Well said! Honesty is best.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Thanks!
| lalwanivikas wrote:
| hello ex-boss! congrats :D
| shymaple wrote:
| Awesome dude
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Congratulations Paras!
|
| I've been following your story since it's inception and it's
| incredible what you've achieved.
|
| Best of luck for your next endeavours.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I'm sure you made a lot of money on this exit, but given that
| your company was sold for so much it must mean you had already
| been making good money before the sale? Why sell?
| paraschopra wrote:
| I wasn't involved in day to day that much, and felt it was the
| right time to pass the baton.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I find I can barely bring myself to sell off stocks in a
| company that's doing well, unless my future outlook has
| changed.
|
| Did you anticipate there are changes coming that will require
| these businesses to radically change their products in order
| to survive?
| richardw wrote:
| Wow! I used you back in the day. Good work, Paras.
| devops000 wrote:
| Congratulation!
| fatnoah wrote:
| Wow, payoff after 15 years. Congratulations!
| XCSme wrote:
| So I just need 2 more years :D and then +$49.98m/year revenue
| will come
| pantulis wrote:
| Congratulations! I remember using VWO in 2013, outstanding
| product!
| romanzubenko wrote:
| Amazing outcome, congratulations! Back in 2015 working at Gusto
| as the first growth engineer I remember reading vwo blog to
| understand how a/b testing works.
| paraschopra wrote:
| All of our initial growth came from either word of mouth or the
| content I was churning out on a daily basis.
| ulf-77723 wrote:
| Congrats!
|
| What have been your highest highs and lowest lows during this
| journey?
|
| When Google discontinued their A/B Testing tool - was it
| surprising for you?
|
| How has the CRO landscape changed out of your perspective in the
| last 15 years? 1st party tracking, serverside testing, etc.
| paraschopra wrote:
| I think the low was covid - with budget cuts, we had a sudden
| revenue drop and didn't know when or whether it will recover at
| all. But thankfully as we had been profitable from day 1, we
| didn't lay off anyone.
|
| The high is every time we launched a new feature that set the
| industry standard. (For example, integrating heatmaps into A/B
| tests and migration from frequentist to bayesian statistics).
|
| Another high has always been our annual international trips -
| we had been taking our entire company to a vacation every year.
| As a company, Wingify team has vacationed together in Thailand,
| Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Dubai, Nepal, and Goa. Most recently, ~400
| people partied together on a boat in Bangkok, and it was a
| high!
|
| Yes, Google discontinuing their A/B testing tool was a surprise
| (but a pleasant one obviously).
|
| CRO over the last 15 years has shifted in maturity. It started
| with testing red v/s green buttons in 2010 but now it is a full
| blown science with observations, hypothesis, prioritisation,
| experimentation and personalization!
| shostack wrote:
| What do you think of the increasingly sparse measurement data
| available to marketers and the rise of needing to focus on
| measuring incrementality through statistical experiments when
| smaller companies may not have enough data to obtain statsig
| results?
| paraschopra wrote:
| When you don't have enough data, doing usability tests and
| understanding + applying best practices can help you avoid
| common mistakes.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| 400 people? Oh, so not a tiny company after all? I was
| imagining a duo and perhaps a contractor or two.
|
| How did you handle all these employees? Maybe some were
| family members.
| adityapuranik wrote:
| Congratulations Paras!
|
| Been following you for a while on Twitter, love the book recos!
| dcdgo wrote:
| Really inspiring to hear your success story Mr. Chopra. I showed
| it to my coworkers and we're all impressed.
| gigatexal wrote:
| This post made my day. What a dope shoutout to everyone. Congrats
| to you! and your team and everyone who got paid.
|
| Congrats again!
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Holy shit you killed it! Congratulations.
|
| You are an inspiration for us, that didn't make it (yet).
| paraschopra wrote:
| Good luck!
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Holy shit, you've made it!
|
| You are an inspiration for us, those who haven't made it. I've
| been around for a similar time and never even ran my own company.
|
| I hope one day to hit a homerun like you did. You deserved it.
| Cheers!
| janosch_123 wrote:
| Another overnight success - after 16 years of work.
|
| Well done, very inspiring.
| XCSme wrote:
| Congrats!
|
| I am curious where do you think VWO is heading now? If people buy
| it, they expect growth, I assume. I guess the plan is to expand?
| Either through marketing or extending the product scope?
|
| I was surprised by this:
|
| > Delhi-based Wingify has grown from a two-person startup into a
| profitable global software provider with over 6,000 clients
|
| So 6000 clients is enough for a $50mn/year revenue? Enterprise is
| where the money at!
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| Congrats Paras !
| 2024user wrote:
| That's awesome.. huge congrats!
| neilv wrote:
| Congrats! Questions:
|
| * Are you happy with the journey, and the time horizon to exit?
|
| * As advice to the impatient, do you have any insight into
| whether a sufficiently big exit could've been sooner?
| paraschopra wrote:
| - Yes, I'm very happy!
|
| - Advice, paradoxically, is to not gun for an exit. Only
| companies that don't need an exit get an exit. (It's sort of
| like dating).
| justmarc wrote:
| I remember you launching this! I even used it and it was one if
| not the best at the time!
|
| Well deserved.
| mhog_hn wrote:
| Congratulations Paras :)
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Well done! Some good questions here; hope you get a chance to
| answer them.
| ryanmerket wrote:
| Massive congrats! Good to see the dream is still alive and well!
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Congrats!
|
| What made you commit and build this project when you were 22 year
| old vs million others SAAS you could have built at that time?
| Say, a CRM to compete with Salesforce, or a new web based Excel
| or web based Photoshop tool?
| paraschopra wrote:
| This was my 5th startup. During my college days I kept
| launching startups (Kroomsa, Precimark, MyJugaad.in). Failure
| of all these made me introspect and I realized I was trapped
| into the engineer's fallacy: build things without knowing or
| caring about how to market them. This pushed me to learn
| marketing and I fell deeper into the rabbit hole.
|
| So, my next attempt was build a marketing suite as I was
| learning a lot about what works and what doesn't. But even that
| turned out to be a dud as I put too many features into it. But
| I did launch it on HN
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 and got a few
| users.
|
| Users found the UX too complicated and I got feedback to focus
| on 1 among the 10s of features I had added. See this comment by
| @patio11
|
| >because you pack an AWFUL lot onto that first screen
|
| So as my next iteration, I picked A/B testing and made a visual
| editor to make creation of A/B tests stupidly simple and that
| took off because it allowed marketers launch A/B tests without
| being reliant on developers.
|
| This product, Visual Website Optimizer (VWO), took off!
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Thanks for this. To get it straight, you decided to go for
| marketing niche has it was an industry that obsessed you.
|
| From their, feedback allowed to focus on one thing and do it
| well. This makes sense as you probably stretched yourself too
| thin. But the thing I don't get is, what was the
| trigger/pivot that made you go for 'A/B/ testing and not
| another segment of marketing niche?
|
| At that time, weren't there other players in A/B segment who
| were far more established? What competitive edge did you see
| that made you go all in in A/B and which eventually took off?
| paraschopra wrote:
| I picked A/B testing because I discovered the most used
| product (Google Website Optimizer, now defunkt) was pretty
| crappy.
|
| As an engineer, I couldn't figure out how to use it and it
| was meant for marketers.
|
| So I sensed an opportunity within the A/B testing niche. In
| fact, the name Visual Website Optimizer comes from the fact
| that it did with Google Website Optimizer did, but visually
| (in an editor, instead of HTML code).
|
| Optimizely started at the same time as us. They went to YC
| and raised a bunch of money. We remained bootstrapped.
| 20after4 wrote:
| It sounds like making it stupid simple and easy for non
| developers was the w.
| peterpans01 wrote:
| Do you have any advices for someone about to learn marketing
| as dev same as your younger self?
| soheil wrote:
| Here is what the site looked like initially - so don't be scared
| that everything has to look perfect and shiny.
|
| Plans start at $49/month
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140701054439/https://vwo.com/
|
| and now
|
| $393 per month, billed annually
|
| https://vwo.com/pricing/
|
| They sure did listen to @patio11
| paulpauper wrote:
| 3 letter .com. pretty impressive to get one of those
| soheil wrote:
| meh if you're racking up $100k/mo you could probably afford
| one. Here are some auction on Godaddy:
| wmr.com $5,000 Min. Offer pox.com $95,000 Buy
| Now otp.com $100,000 Min. Offer
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Inspiring. Congrats!
| juhanakristian wrote:
| Congrats! Would be interesting to see the growth rate of the
| company.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| Congratulations!
|
| Just curious, usually being purchased by a Private Equity firm
| spells a death knell for the company. Of course at the right
| price it makes sense that you wanted to sell it away, but what
| are your thoughts about what will happen to the company now?
| bigiain wrote:
| Just as a counter point, private equity seems to have helped
| WPEngine become so successful that Mullenweg has totally lost
| his mind over it.
| gobengo wrote:
| private equity + a whole lot of commons to encircle
| swozey wrote:
| And WordPress can thank CPanel and the tens of thousands of
| customer support and sysadmins that supported millions of
| WordPress users at $9/mo for a decade and have never once
| interacted or known who Mullenweg is.
|
| And they can thank mysql.. and apache.. and php..
|
| Take your money and be happy.
|
| I met some of the worst people (CEOs) working in webhosting.
| Some truly awful people became very rich.
|
| edit; I thought this was referencing old drama. This is brand
| new. www.reddit.com/r/wpdrama. I don't know anything about
| Mullenweg, I don't mean to sound like I'm calling him awful
| specifically.
| bigiain wrote:
| This brand new drama (well, August/Sept vintage drama)
| reveals a _lot_ about Mullenweg.
|
| I, for one, am happy to specifically call him awful.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Could anyone summarize the drama? I've been poking around
| the subreddit, and it's clear something is going on
| (https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7931urG9ho) but it's
| not clear what he actually did.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7eoTXQnwhh is as close
| to an explanation as I've found, but it seems tangential to
| whatever kickstarted the drama in the first place.
| mooreds wrote:
| It depends on the type of private equity too. There are
| absolutely firms that want to milk a profitable business by
| shutting down investment.
|
| There are others that are all about growth.
| stackghost wrote:
| Stylistic note: "knell" is a word for a sound, like the ringing
| of a solemn type of bell.
|
| So something can't be said to "spell a death knell".
| codetrotter wrote:
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/death-
| kn...
|
| This page has a couple examples that use the phrasing
| "spelling" a death knell:
|
| > If it does, it almost spells the death knell of a great
| number of football clubs throught the country.
|
| > Indeed, it may spell the death knell of the other place.
|
| If it sounds strange in US English, could it be a way of
| wording that's more common in UK English?
| lgas wrote:
| "X spells Y" means "X results in Y". It was used correctly.
| dahart wrote:
| Please don't forget about 2nd definitions of words, and
| idioms. The stylistic note here is to be _really_ careful
| when language policing. From what I've seen, it's almost
| always wrong and backfires looking bad on you to claim other
| people's word choices are incorrect. I know this from plenty
| of experience being knocked off the high horse. ;) But
| language is broader and more fluid than we imagine, and it's
| quite fun to be a student of the way language works and
| changes over time. In English it gets even more fun when
| tracing etymologies through the other languages where our
| words came from and see the weird subtle ways the meanings
| change.
|
| knell (noun) 2: "an indication of the end or the failure of
| something" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knell
|
| spell (verb) 2: "to add up to / MEAN", 3: "come to
| understand" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell
|
| Examples of the idiom 'spell a death knell':
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/862658646/the-latest-u-s-
| blow...
|
| https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/gladstone/spe.
| ..
|
| https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Machine-
| Learn...
|
| https://www.protectingtaxpayers.org/international/to-
| shield-...
| prewett wrote:
| I believe that back when the church was the center of English
| village life, they would ring the low bell when someone died.
| Being a village, you'd know when someone was ill. The bell
| was audible throughout the village, and probably to most of
| the surrounding fields, so having seen them struggle through
| their sickness, you'd know who had just died.
|
| Anything, words included, that could metaphorically convey
| that the death-struggle was now finished. (Ironically,
| though, the death knell of things like companies is usually
| sounded before they are actually dead, and rather when the
| company is ill but the writer thinks that death is
| inevitable.) Although I don't like "spell a death knell"
| because the rhyme has an awkward rhythm, and it would be
| better to "sound" the knell.
| paraschopra wrote:
| My co-founder is continuing and so is rest of the leadership
| team. So, I'm expecting company and its culture to remain as
| is.
| rwalling wrote:
| Bravo, @paraschopra What an incredible journey. I remember when
| you launched. I hadn't realized it was 16 years ago!
|
| I'll hit you up privately with an invite to tell your story on
| Startups for the Rest of Us. It's a fitting place for a
| bootstrapper like yourself.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Awesome! Yes, indeed 16 years is a long period. But I was lucky
| to have been exposed to HN during the early years. I remember
| interacting with you!
| ExxKA wrote:
| I should have guessed this was your handle Rob :) I listen to
| your podcast whenever I need a boost, but somehow never made
| the connection that you are one of "us", here.
|
| If you'd like to get some scandi guys on your show, I am a GP
| at www.likeminded.vc, and connected into the community around
| Copenhagen and the nordics.
| cabinguy wrote:
| What a great story & ending. I'm very happy for you -
| congratulations!
| didip wrote:
| Congratulations. Now tell us stories when things were hard and
| you almost gave up. Bet you have a lot of stories like this.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Yep, but over time they make you stoic and that stoicism helps
| outside of startups too.
| nivals wrote:
| Long time user. Great product. Strong willed execution. Congrats
| to you!
| twapi wrote:
| What an incredible achievement! Congratulations @paraschopra
| manav wrote:
| Congrats Paras.
| constantlm wrote:
| Congrats! I used VWO extensively in a previous life as a "growth
| hacker".
| l2silver wrote:
| Hey Chopra,
|
| Thanks for sharing, this is really inspiring!
|
| Just wondering, for other bootstrappers, if you do end up selling
| for, I don't know, $200 million letsay, how does that money
| generally get split? What percentage of the company did you own
| before selling, and what were the tradeoffs when selling
| ownership?
| malshe wrote:
| The TechCrunch article the OP linked above mentions this:
|
| > Chopra, who owned 71% of Wingify before the acquisition, will
| retain a minority stake in the firm, one of the sources said.
| l2silver wrote:
| Thanks
| petekoomen wrote:
| Congratulations, @paraschopra! A great and well-deserved outcome
| :)
| sedatk wrote:
| Congrats! Was the "Show HN" feedback useful, and did it affect
| how you developed the product?
| paraschopra wrote:
| Yes, yes, so much yes.
|
| Without the feedback, this wouldn't have happened.
|
| I've learned that what kills startups isn't so much a bad
| product, but lack of feedback. You can iterate your way out of
| a valley if you know which way is up.
| mikepalmer wrote:
| > You can iterate your way out of a valley if you know which
| way is up.
|
| love this, I think this is my new personal motto!
| paul7986 wrote:
| Very nice and congrats.
|
| Yet sharing the cost of the sale I'd be concerned about doing
| that on the public Internet.
| pranade wrote:
| Congrats Paras - amazing story!
| aunty_helen wrote:
| The HN dream. Congrats and enjoy the fruits of your labor :D
| manish_gill wrote:
| Question - What is typically the future of companies that are
| acquired by Private Equity firms?
|
| As a former employee of VWO who worked there for ~3 years, I'm
| curious about the future of the company.
| paraschopra wrote:
| I think the plan is to keep growing profitably, but I'm also
| curious and keen to learn how private equity runs a company.
| manish_gill wrote:
| Saw your posts. It's reassuring to hear that the leadership
| team will continue to operate the company!
|
| Good luck with everything, Paras. Have fun running the AI Lab
| :)
| harisenbon wrote:
| Congratulations!
|
| I just checked when I started using VWO, and found a really nice
| exchange between you and me from Fri, Dec 11, 2009.
|
| VWO is still the absolute best split testing tool out there. You
| deserve all the success.
| edelwiess wrote:
| This here speaks so much more to the success. Actual customers
| praising the product.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Wow, Dec 2009 is literally when I had launched the MVP of VWO.
| So cool to hear this story from you! Brings back so many
| memories of anxious excitement and working till 3 am :)
| mooreds wrote:
| Congrats. Thanks for closing the loop. So many stories/comments
| on the internet are left unresolved; it is nice to see a loop
| closed.
| nojvek wrote:
| VWO was bootstrapped? wow!
|
| Some of the PMs I worked with loved showing off what VWO could do
| with a few clicks. Great tool.
|
| Congrats on $200M!
|
| Paras, You're now an inspiration for millions of devs, especially
| from India on what is possible to build bootstrapped.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| VWO vs Optimizely was the biggest internal debate back in 2017.
| Enemies were made, heads rolled...
|
| Congrats!
| paraschopra wrote:
| Haha, yes - we were neck to neck often.
| dsiroker wrote:
| (Co-founder of Optimizely here) Congrats! It was fun competing
| with you
| peterisdirsa wrote:
| Why "was"?
| statictype wrote:
| Optimizely also sold to private equity many years ago.
| Presumably the founderts aren't there any more.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Dan, thank you! I has been fun competing with you.
|
| I remember the golden days :)
|
| I've been following your journey post Optimizely! Hope your new
| ventures turn out to be equally fun and fulfilling.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| I think it was a time when bootstrapping was a thing.. I feel
| its scary for new startups to bootstrap since the last decade
| with huge fundings, especially with funding in billions
| becoming a normal with the ongoing AI craze.
|
| https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/largest-ai-startup-funding-
| de...
| abhimanyue1998 wrote:
| AI inference is expensive, hence, funding is needed. In
| future, when AI infra becomes cheaper, we will see more
| bootstrapped AI startups too.
| sskates wrote:
| Congrats to you both!! Paras- you guys were always one of the
| ones we looked up to when starting Amplitude way back in
| 2012.
| throwaway638637 wrote:
| Optimizely as in Episerver?? I thought Optimizely was
| Episerver's rebrand.
| jeroen wrote:
| Episerver bought Optimizely and then took the name.
| throwaway638637 wrote:
| Oh what a strange decision. But that makes more sense than
| yhe reverse.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Congrats
| ninjaa wrote:
| wow congrats!!
| DelightOne wrote:
| Congratulations!
|
| I've got a small question. How do you deal with people asking for
| open sourcing your product/code, claiming they don't want to use
| a product they don't control?
| paraschopra wrote:
| Enterprises don't ask that. We never got that request.
| patio11 wrote:
| Congrats! Thrilled for you and the team.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Thanks Patrick!
|
| This couldn't have happened without you. You have impacted more
| people than you may realize.
|
| I distinctly remember when I asked your feedback on my $9/mo
| plan, you told me to go for $99/mo. Baffled on how can someone
| pay so much for what I just coded, I settled for $49/mo. Should
| have listened to you.. :)
| kalid wrote:
| Congrats Paras, really happy for you!
| richardfeynman wrote:
| @paras - I worked at Optimizely in the early days and led online
| marketing there from 2012 - 2016. I remember seeing your team
| copy our SEM strategy, so I added Hindu gods (shiva, vishnu, et
| al) to the UTM query params in our ads for your guys to dissect /
| get a laugh from.
|
| Congrats on the exit. really nice to see.
| jacob_rezi wrote:
| wanna join Rezi? we dont have a marketing team but get 4K
| signups a day
| pryelluw wrote:
| Friendly heads up that some thumbnail in your landing page
| are not loading. Specifically the ones that link to the
| sample resumes for a given title. The one for CTO and the one
| for compliance coordinator failed to load.
| richardfeynman wrote:
| thanks for this kind offer, but i'm working on something
| else.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Physics, no doubt.
| anne_deepa wrote:
| Are you hiring engineers? I would love to join.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Haha, I'll ask around if they ever figured out the query
| parameters :)
| shostack wrote:
| As a fellow marketer I've totally done similar stuff to send
| messages to whomever is digging through their utms.
|
| More usefully though, you can learn a shocking amount about a
| company from their utms and event data.
| richardfeynman wrote:
| this guy gets it.
| vectoral wrote:
| I haven't dug into this much--out of curiosity, what do you
| think are some of the most useful things you can learn?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Most importantly, you can often find out WHY a campaign
| exists with stuff like utm=small-biz.
|
| If they're a competitor, congrats, you just found a
| potential niche you may have overlooked. If you look at
| what events they send to their analytics, you can uncover
| what they know and don't know about app usage or ad
| performance.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| How does one copy SEM strategy? How do you reverse engineer
| based on ads and utm_tags? How do I even know that you are
| doing it right so it's worth copying?
|
| I good with API docs and weird bugs but this is beyond me.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| Just upvoted the original post, you earned it
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Daaamn. RIP to your DMs as the kids say. Congrats!
| rco8786 wrote:
| Mega congratulations. Great community here.
| tucnak wrote:
| Another brick in the wall
| nanoflite wrote:
| Sorry guys, this is sad news for the world. You just made the
| divide between ultra rich and ultra poor larger. And please,
| don't start complaining on how hard it was.
| tinktank wrote:
| You do the same when you accept your salary every month. Start
| by giving that up.
| bainganbharta wrote:
| A lot of bootlicking in the comments.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Nothing to add except more congratulations to you.
|
| That's a huge exit and you deserve to be incredibly proud of it.
| neofrommatrix wrote:
| Congratulations; really impressive.
| babyent wrote:
| Congrats! Thats wonderful.
| xp84 wrote:
| Hey, cool! Former VWO customer here (it was my previous company).
| You guys made a good product and had a good revenue team selling
| it as well. Thrilled that you had a great exit!
| gk1 wrote:
| Congrats Paras. VWO has been my go-to A/B testing platform ever
| since everyone else either pivoted upmarket into six-figure
| "experience management platforms" or shut down (Google
| Experiments). I hope this won't change!
| paraschopra wrote:
| I'm hopeful that VWO will continue to stay true to its roots!
| sakerbos wrote:
| That's an epic win! 15 years of the startup grind/rollercoaster
| is impressive, well done!
| peterisdirsa wrote:
| Why"startup"? It's just a businesses, nothing special
| akww wrote:
| Eh? Did you really need to comment this?
| xyst wrote:
| Congrats on the exit, but PE is going to saddle the company with
| unnecessary debt, extract as much value it can, charge
| "consulting fees", then strip it for parts in bankruptcy.
|
| Customers are going to feel the squeeze in 1-2 years.
| jgenius07 wrote:
| This is a big achievement. Used the tool along against Hotjar and
| the likes and loved VWO.
| actionable wrote:
| Congrats Paras, I remember when I first found out about VWO in
| 2012.
|
| An amazing outcome and a testament to you and the value of
| staying the course over 15 years!
| badmonster wrote:
| congrats
| quelup wrote:
| Congrats, this is amazing!
| Amaresh wrote:
| Congrats Paras. It's been fun to follow along the VWO journey!
| jeffreyq wrote:
| so inspiring, congratulations!
| newusertoday wrote:
| i remember reading your blog and following your journey in the
| initial years it was quite inspirational and i learned so many
| things along the way thanks to you and @patio11. Thanks for
| sharing and be open about it.
| plinkplonk wrote:
| This might be a dumb question, for which apologies in advance,
| but isn't 200 million a little _low_ for a company with $ 50
| million revenue? But maybe not, -- the profit is say $20 million
| and the acquirers are paying 10 X annual profit?
| chii wrote:
| at $20mil profit, that's a 40% margin, which is quite high,
| even for a tech company (tho for a startup, which can be nimble
| and agile, it's not impossible).
| nfm wrote:
| Annual growth rate is typically a big factor in PE acquisition
| multiples. At a 4x multiple of ARR, I'd hazard a guess that
| this was on the lower side.
| paraschopra wrote:
| It's not a dumb question.
|
| But what I learned in this process is that companies are valued
| after incorporating many factors (liquidity, earnouts, future
| involvement, growth rate, profit, retention, current market
| mood, etc. etc.) and multiples we see reported in media are
| obviously sit at the outlier curves.
|
| I got a good deal overall (not just monetarily), and that's
| what I was shooting for.
| 7e wrote:
| For every one of these, there are 100 which are miserable
| failures, where the founders would have been better off with a
| career at FAANG.
| pbrum wrote:
| Fantastic, inspiring post. Congratulations x 200!
| advaitruia wrote:
| Congratulations! This is great - one of the few globally
| successful SaaS cos from India with an exit!
| maxnevermind wrote:
| Why did you sell it?
| notcrazylol wrote:
| @paraschopra congrats! Where and how did you go about learning
| marketing for startups? I am also currently building one and
| would love some pointers :) Thank you
| paraschopra wrote:
| You may not like this answer but the best starting point is to
| define marketing in the particular context and market in which
| your product exists. Marketing is so highly contextual that
| sometimes I don't even like the word.
| wbond wrote:
| Totally random, but did you use Flourishlib (PHP) at some point
| ~15 years ago? Your name sounded familiar from a long-ago open
| source project.
|
| Either way, congrats on your hard work and success!
| paraschopra wrote:
| Wow, i vaguely recall using it!
| silexia wrote:
| I have thought about selling to PE as well, I founded my company
| in 2009 as well. But I have seen too many times how PE breaks
| promises made to customers and employees and I think it is
| unethical to sell to them.
| rohityadavcloud wrote:
| Happy for you - congratulations Paras, Sparsh and VWO. Did the
| (long-term) employees make anything?
| sparshgupta wrote:
| This is a big event for not just Paras and myself, but many in
| the team :)
| paraschopra wrote:
| Yes, they did.
| singhshashi wrote:
| Many Congratulations! Yours has been an inspirational journey for
| others in India looking to build for the world.
| havercosine wrote:
| Paras, as a an Indian founder, I've watched your journey for few
| years now. You are an inspiration and a thoughtful leader. Your
| "Mental Models for Startup Founders", is a very well written
| mirror for every founder to look into.
|
| Hope you get some nice time off and go back with vigour to
| Turing's Dream now...
| mixtureoftakes wrote:
| 15 years in tech is like a month in crypto
| howon92 wrote:
| Congrats! What made you not want to take any investments and what
| was the most counter intuitive thing that made you succeed?
| paraschopra wrote:
| We were always profitable and growing at a sustainable pace, so
| never needed funding.
|
| Most counter intuitive thing was to not think I was missing out
| on anything as we didn't have VCs backing us.
| tiagom87 wrote:
| Congrats Paras! ps: Your mental models blog/book should be taught
| in business schools.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Thanks! I've updated them and they'll be published as a book (+
| released online) this year.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Can I borrow $5? (joke)
|
| Congrats on the success!
| tarunkotia wrote:
| Congratulations!
| pkondle wrote:
| Congrats Paras. I used VWO long time back and came away
| impressed. Looking to hear more great things from you.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| Wow congrats Paras! such an inspiring journey you had..
| anshulbhide wrote:
| This is what HN community is all about. Wholesome posts like this
| one :)
| paraschopra wrote:
| I also want to thank my co-founder Sparsh for building the
| company with me. He deserves as much congrats as it's coming my
| way! (He sometimes lurks here on HN)!
|
| Couldn't have built Wingify without him!
|
| He'll continue to be associated with the company as the CEO and I
| feel rested knowing that :)
| sparshgupta wrote:
| Thanks
| keiferski wrote:
| _And now, 15 years later, "site:ycombinator.com" is what I
| appended when I wanted to search for advice on what to keep in
| mind while selling my company._
|
| There is a ton of great advice and information in the HN
| archives, so much so that it could be a startup idea itself.
| jdbohrman wrote:
| Congratulations that's amazing. What are your next steps from
| here? Planning to continue or take a break?
| myuzio wrote:
| I love how wholesome the comments are, probably the most
| wholesome thread about startups I've ever seen. congrats :)
| rvba wrote:
| Will patio11 get a share?
| paraschopra wrote:
| i owe him!
| kylegalbraith wrote:
| Just want to say congratulations on the journey and reaching such
| a massive accomplishment!
|
| Seeing a post like this on HN with all of the positive comments
| and thoughts is truly an inspiration.
| ayushpawar wrote:
| inspirational stuff man!
| abhimanyue1998 wrote:
| this is the kind of stuff that motivates me to push through.
| cheers man, you are an inspiration.
| saurabhchalke wrote:
| Congrats, Paras!
| vijayer wrote:
| Founder of statsig here- congrats. Super inspiring story.
| jsfunfun wrote:
| relax and then find your way past the cash, and to being rich:
| love and beauty with you family
| casslin wrote:
| amazing story! congrats!
| williamjinq wrote:
| Congrats! I'm also bootstrapping my SaaS business and hope to
| reach your level one day!
|
| Curious about your next steps--are you taking a break, or
| planning to build another startup?
| paraschopra wrote:
| I plan to start an AI lab from India. I sense an opportunity -
| India's way behind China and US.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| After reading the words of VWO founder and the wholesome
| responses/comments, I can say that _Humility at its finest_.
|
| Congrats to Paras Chopra, and I applaud everyone for this
| gesture.
| dzonga wrote:
| congrats. for the things you achieved and the things you didn't
| do.
|
| you could've given many reasons of not starting e.g i'm in India
| - I need to move to the US etc, I can't access capital, too young
| etc. there's a lot of competitors etc. but you took the plunge
| anyway and got handsomely rewarded for it.
|
| congrats for your inspiring journey.
| paraschopra wrote:
| the key was my naivety as a 22 year old. I honestly didn't know
| any of the reasons why it couldn't work!
| mohidzahid wrote:
| so proud of you
| leuren wrote:
| Congrats! I did a lot of work with VWO back in 2017 and 2018.
| Great platform, and deserved.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Congratulations Paras! What are your plans next? Do you have to
| stay, new venture or just chill and enjoy?
| rajnathani wrote:
| Congratulations Paras! Given that I know you IRL, it's so nice to
| see your post here!
|
| JFYI for those who have seen similar posts on HN earlier, one of
| them (2020) from earlier was from Paras when his company got
| pretty successful already:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470
| hzxs1990225 wrote:
| congratulations
| tincholio wrote:
| Congrats man! Just as a side note, "paras" means best, in
| Finnish, so that'd make you the Best Chopra!
| illegalmemory wrote:
| "Paras" in Sanskrit means "someone who, by their touch, turns
| anything into gold."
| davorb wrote:
| It's also Persian for "money"
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| Extremely strong nominative determinism at play here across
| multiple languages.
| paraschopra wrote:
| This is awesome, thanks!
| santa_boy wrote:
| Wow! Congrats!
| adhambadr wrote:
| what a sweet message. Congratulations!
| ice45571 wrote:
| Congrats~~
| ExxKA wrote:
| Congratulations Paras! Awesome to hear a story like this and
| impressive that you managed to build such a strong company in
| such a short time.
| alekhshah wrote:
| Great VWO, Kudos to the founders!
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Must be sad to have to let things you built go, especially
| knowing how often selling them starts a downward spiral leading
| to their demise.
| paraschopra wrote:
| Actually, no.
|
| I feel inspired and excited about life and what experiments
| this money can help me do (which otherwise wouldn't get
| funded).
| lohithjavali wrote:
| Congratulations @paraschipra
| MikeTaylor wrote:
| How tragic that the goal of startups isn't to make something
| useful but to get acquired (with consequent inevitable
| dismemberment and shuttering). Well done on the $200M, I guess.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Tragic? I don't follow that. If the goal isn't to make
| something useful in one way or another then why would a startup
| enterprise ever get acquired?
| max-privatevoid wrote:
| Is "makes the producer a lot of money" the only factor you
| consider when thinking of a good product?
| varunthumukunta wrote:
| Congrats Paras!
| igleria wrote:
| Enjoy your early retirement (that is what I would do in your
| case, spending the rest of my life enjoying things now that money
| is not a problem)
| ricenb wrote:
| what an impressive story, please accept my praise!
| indus wrote:
| @paras: Congrats! If you remember we met in Palo Alto when you
| were thinking about moving to the Bay Area -- I spilled my tea
| which soiled your t-shirt :-)
|
| This is a fantastic outcome. Why not keep going?
| paraschopra wrote:
| Yes, sir I do remember :)
|
| Why not keep going? Well, everything comes to an end
| eventually. Projects are kind of like that - they start and
| they end.
| indus wrote:
| Amazing!
|
| Good luck with whatever you are planning to do next.
|
| Hmu, if you are in the Bay Area next.
| cmenge wrote:
| Impressive, congrats!
| Kostchei wrote:
| 16 years+ for $200mn minus costs. Still pretty good, grats :)
| dockerd wrote:
| Congrats @paraschopra ! This is an incredibly inspiring story for
| many of us.
|
| A couple of questions: 1. What would be your
| one piece of advice for someone looking to bootstrap a company?
| 2. How can one identify B2B problems worth solving? And how do
| you go about acquiring and selling to those customers? 3.
| If you were starting today, which domain would you choose?
| paraschopra wrote:
| >What would be your one piece of advice for someone looking to
| bootstrap a company?
|
| Hire only when your revenue exceeds costs. Might be hard but
| this instills the discipline of always operating at a profit.
|
| >How can one identify B2B problems worth solving? And how do
| you go about acquiring and selling to those customers?
|
| Look for inefficiencies in workflows. If you save companies
| time or effort in a big way, they will pay up. To acquire
| customers, you need to super-precise emails (I never did
| outbound but I'm unsure my style of content marketing will fly
| today)
|
| >If you were starting today, which domain would you choose? The
| one you feel most passionate about. But remain open to
| significant pivots. First idea never works, but it is essential
| to choose something you can really get into.
| rkowal wrote:
| Huge, huge respect and Congrats!! Enjoy it and continue doing
| great work!
| kopirgan wrote:
| Congrats! This is really inspiring considering its based on
| internal accrual without external funding.
| guhcampos wrote:
| I'm so so sorry for all your employees right now.
| paraschopra wrote:
| why?
| ellis0n wrote:
| Congratulations! You're the best! It would be a great tradition
| to donate to a random startup after each exit. Why isn't this
| part of startup culture? Any PG-like article about that?
| Benjamin_Dobell wrote:
| It's common for founders who have exited to become angel
| investors. Donating to a startup probably doesn't make a heap
| of sense though.
| paraschopra wrote:
| I along with my wife have been running Escape Velocity grants
| where we give no-conditions grant to young people under 25 who
| show promise.
|
| https://invertedpassion.com/escape-velocity-grant/
|
| Plan to accelerate it.
| Dinux wrote:
| Congrats! Do you have any idea what to do next?
| m11c wrote:
| Congratulations! Well done.
| Pete-Codes wrote:
| That's a fookin crazy exit!
|
| Always like seeing these stories. Will mention it in my High
| Signal newsletter.
| giorgioz wrote:
| Congrats!!
|
| Ahrefs says you reached 3.4mln backlinks and 18k linking
| websites: https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-
| checker/?input=https%3A...
|
| How did you achive such incredible numbers?
|
| I noticed you localized the landing pages to
| English/Spanish/German/Portuguese. I did that too when founding
| polyblog.io and multilocale.com but never got results incredible
| as yours. I noticed you use Yoast SEO, the sitemap.xml is not
| localized and you also didn't add localized meta tags. I suspect
| those localization "best practises" in reality matter very little
| compared to the sheer incredible amount of backlinks you got...
| paraschopra wrote:
| I love writing, perhaps that's the trick?
| igauravsehrawat wrote:
| You deserved it Paras!!
|
| Have distinct memories when you hired people from my College, to
| organizing hackathons, to your slack group and your newsletter
| had been inspirational.
|
| Say hi to Varun from my side.
| Ayushism wrote:
| Proved again, you can just do things.
| memhole wrote:
| Congrats! You all have done excellent work. As much as my tastes
| towards user experiments has changed, I've read your papers and
| you all really put forth a good product.
|
| I've been publishing my work that never got PMF. Maybe it'll give
| you some inspiration for a later endeavor. You were one of my
| "competitors".
|
| https://blog.graphicalmethods.com/ai-persona-media-testing-a...
| brentm wrote:
| Nice win, Congrats!
| sebastianvoelkl wrote:
| Congrats
| auston wrote:
| Lets gooooooo!! Congrats man!
| oniony wrote:
| Curious as to whether you had people hounding you for money after
| posting this.
| brianwawok wrote:
| 15 years is such a long time. I understand why bootstrapped path
| takes longer than the VC path, I wonder if there are stats on
| average time from start till sale both bootstrapped vs VC. (On
| like year 8 of bootstrapped here).
| barunbuilds wrote:
| Congratulations! VWO was my GrowthX assignment so I've always
| followed your story - super inspirational!
| srinathkrishna wrote:
| Congrats and inspiring to hear your journey! :)
| jarek83 wrote:
| I must say I always hated your tool for how it hijacks page
| rendering. I took long battles with our marketing team, as we
| fought for every single millisecond of loading times, and VWO
| introduction just thrown this all into the bin. And I wanted to
| put up a negative review on gartner but they never let it through
| - I guess it was because of the $25 USD gift card campaign, so
| the paid campaign would not backfire the product. Which of course
| made me hate your tool even more.
|
| But that aside, I'm really glad (envy?) that the tool was
| successful for you!
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