Practical Founders Podcast

Jan 03 2025 124 ep. 60 mins 23

Practical Founders Podcast artwork

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast with host Greg Head for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies--without big funding.

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#125: Created the World’s Largest Subscription Service for Creative Design – Russ Perry

Jan 03 2025 68 mins

Quote from Russ Perry, founder and CEO of Design Pickle “The game for practical SaaS founders really comes down to recognizing that there is a large market size for very boring niche companies. Finding that niche is the fastest path to success. Don’t be afraid to be boring and specific. “If I were to do Design Pickle all over again, I would have just picked a vertical ni

#124: From Services to SaaS Products to a Successful Acquisition in India - Sunando Bhattacharya

Dec 27 2024 65 mins

Sunando Bhattacharya spent 13 years as a business leader in managed IT services companies in India before starting his own cloud tech services business. This company grew slowly and an opportunity arose to create a software product for one of their clients. Two years later, in 2019, they had a few more Apiculus product customers and focused more on the product. Apiculus is a comple

#123: How Practical Founders Are Winning Big with Growth Equity Funding – Growth Street Partners

Dec 20 2024 57 mins

Steve Wolfe and Nate Grossman are co-founders at Growth Street Partners, a growth equity firm focused on investing in early-stage B2B SaaS companies between $2M-$6M in ARR. They discuss how growth equity funding works for SaaS founders and how it allows entrepreneurs to maintain control while still benefiting from investment and liquidity. In this expert episode, Steve and Nate get

#122: Going Long With Profitable Embedded Accounting Software After 13 Years – Raj Bhaskar

Dec 13 2024 62 mins

Raj Bhaskar is a successful two-time practical software founder with one exit. In 2000, he started his first software company, VisualHOMES, to provide a comprehensive financial management software to public housing agencies. With no outside funding, the business grew to serve 65 regional providers serving 2 million residents before Yardi Systems acquired the company in 2010. After

#121: Avoided a VC Round Using Royalty-Based Funding With No Equity Dilution – Vince Hsieh

Dec 06 2024 65 mins

Vince Hsieh is a two-time entrepreneur who has started, grown, and sold two industrial tech companies that included software and either an RFID or GPS device in the solutions. His second venture, Geoforce, raised a non-dilutive funding round to accelerate global growth before being successfully acquired by private equity investors LLR Partners in 2019. Their royalty-based funding r

#120: Practical Founder Exits for $300 Million Cash with Identity Verification Platform – Bill Spruill

Nov 29 2024 63 mins

Bill Spruill had a successful sales and executive career with two exits before he and his cofounder struck out on their own in the location verification market serving financial and e-commerce companies. Sales grew slowly for several years as they scraped by and kept going. Eventually, they pivoted the company to focus on identity verification and know-your-customer (KYC) with a ne

#119: Growing His Third Side Gig SaaS Venture After Selling His First Two – Troy Munson

Nov 22 2024 63 mins

Troy Munson has been a successful enterprise SaaS sales rep for several years, but he wanted more control over his life—and eventual financial independence. So he launched his own small startup on the side. He learned a lot and sold it before launching his second side gig software company, which he sold for a little bit more. He started his third side-gig startup, Dimmo, in 2023

#118: The Silent PLG Killers: Why Smart Founders Fail at Product-Led Growth - Wes Bush

Nov 15 2024 64 mins

Wes Bush is CEO of ProductLed, a coaching and education company that has helped almost 500 serious SaaS founders to succeed with product-led growth strategies, tactics, and execution. These include freemium products and free trials, where the product itself creates the awareness, engagement, and enthusiasm to buy before any human intervention (aka “the required sales demo”). We

#117: Bootstrapped to 9 Figure Exit in Online Education for Real Estate - Michael McAllister

Nov 08 2024 78 mins

Michael McAllister is the founder and former CEO of The CE Shop, the leading provider of pre-licensing and continuing education for real estate professionals in the U.S. Michael started The CE Shop in 2005 by distributing existing training materials from a continuing education provider. They quickly created their own online education solution and proceeded to expand with specific c

#116: The Do’s and Don’ts of Adding Offshore Software Development Talent – Matt Watson

Nov 01 2024 55 mins

Last year I interviewed three-time software founder Matt Watson on this podcast about his successful practical founder journeys. Matt leveraged offshore software development talent in his last two SaaS companies to staff up quickly and grow efficiently. His top developers and designers were offshore in the Philippines, but they weren’t one-off contractors or difficult-to-manage o