Yet again at a BoS Conference, we were wowed by the wonderful attendees, brilliant speakers, and the great discussions we had.
While it’s no replacement for being at the conference, you can now get early access to all the talks from Business of Software Conference USA 2017.
For his 4th company, Jason Cohen wanted a different journey. Seeing the potential of WPEngine after 2 years of bootstrapping, for the first time Jason took funding. For the first time, Jason decided he would not be the CEO of a company he founded.
We had a fascinating Hangout with Jason last week, which you can watch below. All manner of topics were covered, including:
You had a good idea one day. Your good idea turned into a great product. Slowly but surely, you gained customers who paid for your product. Then you started employing people. People who looked up to you, trusted you, followed you. You’re successful – both the business and you personally.
And yet, there’s still that little voice in your head.
Jon Reynolds founded SwiftKey, the predictive typing app, in 2008 with university friend Ben Medlock. From launch in 2010 to now, SwiftKey has grown to over 300 million daily users. Jon was CEO of the company from its genesis and guided it from humble beginnings, through to selling the business to Microsoft in 2016.
In this fireside chat, Jon tells the story of SwiftKey – its early days in Cambridge, moving to a USA office, and acquisition. A fascinating story of a vastly successful tech company.
Jason Cohen is a hugely successful entrepreneur – he is the founder of Smart Bear Software and WPEngine (which recently passed $100m in annual revenue). In this, his 4th talk at Business of Software Conference, he raises the issue of Founder Health. Are you the Hacker News ‘Founder in Pain’? Or maybe you struggle making the big, emotional decisions that necessarily come with running a business? Jason has words of comfort and challenge for you.
BoS Editor: This blog post is written by our friend Leon at IDR Solutions. IDR Solutions are regular attendees at BoS Events – in fact Leon wrote this as a response to our recent Scaling SaaS Marketing Hangout. Join the conversation on Twitter – Leon tweets at @AthertonLeon.
Mark Littlewood recalled recently receiving emails from a company trying to sell their services where everything about pricing on their website pushed you towards filling in a form to speak to their sales team. Mark was most unimpressed by this.
Seeing the seed of your idea grow into something useable and sellable – that’s the stuff of dreams. But the road to a market-ready product is filled with Product Development potholes.
The 2 years since ShipCompliant’s sale has given its founder Jason Eckenroth plenty of time to think about the process of acquisition. Is it really the big win that it is so often made out to be? What’s more rewarding – the big cash cow, or sticking with the business through potential growth plateaux?
On Saturday, the New York Times published a detailed expose of the activities of a Social Media Influencer company called Devumi who sell fake and fraudulent followers and engagement to people desperate for validation and influence. Influencers peddling their shtick to the world are fraudulently misrepresenting their ‘influence’ for financial gain. They’re everywhere these days and they are making money as a result of their fraudulent behavior in all sorts of ways.
3am in the morning – 5 hours to close.
I felt the weight of 17 years of building a business all come down to this moment where I’d lost absolute, complete confidence that I was gonna make the right decision.
Walking away from something I’d built for 17 years. It was my life. And I had no idea what was gonna be on the other side of it.
Jason Eckenroth founded ShipCompliant in 2000. A bootstrapped company, it grew to be a highly profitable market leader – well loved by customers with a NPS of over 70.
Jason sold the business to a private equity house in 2015. He stayed on to lead the new business unit before the acquirer was sold on to another private equity house in 2016 at which point Jason left. A significant financial success for Jason, no question, but…
Would Jason sell again?