Best of Bootstrapping: Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapped with Paycheck to $15M+

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  SoPost Founder and CEO Jonny Grubin started as a solo entrepreneur, bootstrapped with a paycheck, and had built a $15M+ revenue global business with a small amount of funding when we spoke last year. Excellent story! Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your

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Best of Bootstrapping: Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps with a Paycheck to over $15M

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin started as a solo entrepreneur, bootstrapped with a paycheck, and has built a $15M+ revenue global business with a small amount of funding. Excellent story! Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were

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Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise in the second round? Jonny Grubin: Probably about £300,000. In total, we raised about £900,000. Sramana Mitra: Excellent. I love capital-efficient businesses.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: 2014 and 2015, more of the same? Jonny Grubin: Our focus and what I had built this business around was gifting samples to a friend. We were doing well with that. There was nobody else in the space. Brands loved it. We were on a pretty exciting trajectory. We had a lot of

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Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much did Avon pay you? Jonny Grubin: They paid me £1,000 which seemed like a huge amount of money at that time. It was about validating it all. We were still very much bootstrapped. I didn’t want to be greedy. I need to charge them something. A thousand pounds seemed like a

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Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much money did your friend put in? Jonny Grubin: He put in £45,000, which for me felt like a huge amount of money. Sramana Mitra: What exactly where you able to prove in that MVP? I’m so used to constantly working with people’s pitches. As you were speaking, one thing that struck

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Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 3)

Jonny Grubin: I wrote to a couple of friends and we launched an MVP. People couldn’t do anything with SoPost, but it allowed me to test the concept. In December 2012, we launched a website where you could sign up with your email address. You could add some delivery addresses and create a schedule, but

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Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 2)

Jonny Grubin: Aside from that, there were a couple of things that led to its failure. The way we executed was not great. The whole idea behind what we were trying to do was about making the process of shipping a physical item easier. When we went back and looked back, it was a 26-step

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