Hey there,

Can you do us a wee favor this week?

This is our 40th issue of Bootstrappers Weekly (we've interviewed over 160 founders!), and I’d love to know if we’re getting these newsletters right for you. 

You probably get asked for feedback all the time. I know it’s a little inconvenient, and you might not think your opinion matters. But it does, more than you know. 

I chose this week’s founders for the impact customer feedback had on their businesses. None would’ve been as successful (or as quickly) without it. 

One day, if not today, your business will rely on feedback from customers. And yours helps us give you more of what you want. 

Please let us know what we can do better by answering six short questions in this Typeform. 

Thank you, and enjoy this week’s stories. 

Chris Roper

Managing Editor

If it wasn’t for client feedback, former Arts student David Hollander might never have monetized his ecommerce order management tool.

Never Undersell Your Product – This Ecommerce Founder Listened to Clients and Now Makes Over $2 Million ARR

When David Hollander first built Order Desk, he gave it away for free. Bewildered, his customers asked, “Why aren’t you charging for this?” Less than ten years later, Order Desk pulls in millions of dollars, and now employes 20 people.

That first hire was tough, though.

“I’d never hired anyone before,” David says. “I was terrified they might not understand what I was trying to do. However, I gritted my teeth and hired someone and it ended up being fabulous. They cared as much about it as I did.”

AJ Jetha was knocked back so often he was starting to feel a bit like a punching bag. But like all good fighters, each rejection pushed him to fight all the harder. 

How Multiple Rejections Drove This Founder to Million-Dollar Sales and an Underdog Story for the Ages

When do you throw in the towel? The third or fourth job rejection? Loss of your biggest client? An investor’s door slammed in your face? AJ experienced them all.

“I was trying to pitch the same people who funded some big sites. They gave me 15 minutes only to cut it down to one minute while I was in the waiting room because the dot-com bubble had burst.”

Months later, while switching devices, he discovered another problem he could solve – and a visit to the Macworld convention suggested it was payback time. 

Eric Espinosa and Tyler Leber applied their venture validation skills to build one of the fastest-growing virtual assistant platforms, helping leaders reclaim valuable time.

Six Figures in the First Six Months? These Founders Did It While Breaking the Stigma of Virtual Assistants

Eric hired Tyler as an intern at his consultancy, Venture Validator. To hit deadlines, they hired virtual assistants to help with admin, and when others expressed interest in VAs, the duo began sizing up a shared venture of their own...

“We felt like there was something of real value there. And since we conducted research into product-market fit, we used our processes to test for a virtual assistance agency. We ran five tests surveying over 500 entrepreneurs and the results were higher than almost any other startup we had ever tested.”

Advice of the Week

“Perfectionism makes it difficult for a founder to release something before they feel it’s ready. You can get stuck in the weeds of how your website should look, what your customer experience should be, the colors you use, etcetera. You get trapped in this cycle where you keep redoing it until it’s quote-unquote perfect.”

 - Eric Espinosa, Coconut VA

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