Jason VandeBoom: From Side-Hustle to 1,000 People

Jason VandeBoom will be speaking at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April on the topic: Inflection Points on a Journey from Side Hustle to 1,000 People.

Jason is the founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign. He went against a lot of traditional advice for startups: staying in your lane; not going after big companies as your first customers; treating customer support as a cost centre…

Those unorthodox decisions have been key to the growth of ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign’s Growth

Founded in 2003, ActiveCampaign accelerates every company’s growth with a marketing automation platform designed to deliver great customer experiences. Today ActiveCampaign is the market leader in intelligence-driven customer experience automation. They have over 145,000 customers in more than 170 countries and 850 employees with plans to hit 1,000 within the year.

In January 2020, Susquehanna Growth Equity (lead investor) and Silversmith Capital Partners invested $100 million in growth capital.

What you will learn

Jason will talk about some of the key points in the growth of ActiveCampaign from part time side hustle in 2003, through bootstrapped, steady growth over 10+ years, to a rapid acceleration from 2016.

• What changes for a company and for a CEO founder as you grow.
• ActiveCampaign’s thinking and approach to expansion.
• How in 2020, Jason approached the challenges of culture and quality control leading a rapidly expanding company that suddenly had a dispersed workforce.
• Having adapted to a new way of working in the past year, how does the company see the future?

You will learn how one founder approached some of the strategic, emotional, leadership and personal growth challenges that inevitably come with building a successful company.

Who is Jason VandeBoom?

Jason VandeBoom is the founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, founded in 2003. He’s a self-taught software engineer and technologist.