Saw that Podia accomplished the rare feat of becoming a profitable, venture-backed startup a couple of years ago. Kudos on that!
Thank you so much. It meant a lot to me, because it gave us the freedom to take more product risks!
I’m assuming keeping costs low as you scaled was a big part of it. And so was your bootstrapping experience. What are some tactical mental models for early-stage folks who’d want to keep a handle on costs without adversely affecting their growth potential?
You’re totally right. Having bootstrapped my previous businesses, I was very cognizant about the value of a dollar. We’d never spend on anything we didn’t need to.
A few examples:
- We’d never hire for roles we hadn’t already done ourselves. That way we’d make fewer hiring mistakes and only hire when we felt absolute internal pressure to do so.
- Still to this day, we monitor every purchase we make and we routinely stop subscriptions to products we’re no longer using. Last time I looked, we’re paying subscribers to 80+ different tools.
- We use a financial planning tool, so that we never over spend. That way we can tweak and adjust our hiring plan, future expenses, etc., to make sure that they’re within our budget.