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Today marks ExecThread’s 10-year Anniversary.
Its the longest “job” I’ve ever had in my career, and we’ve weathered many storms along the way.
Here are just a few of the “many” challenges & potholes ExecThread has faced over the past 10 years:
—> originally started as a nonprofit.
—> self-funded it for a year.
—> when raising our seed round, had term sheets rescinded because some VC’s didn’t want to back a founder who wanted to pay himself a salary.
—> experienced a major data security breach in year-1 by a rogue contractor.
—> went through three different CTO’s in our first 4 years.
—> original b2b revenue model failed to generate traction, and all early attempts at monetization failed.
—> had to re-org and let majority of our early staff go in order to extend runway.
—> had to give-up our office space and go fully remote (well before Covid forced it on everyone else) in order to save $$$.
—> turned-down a few lowball “tuck-in” acquisition offers when we were fledgling and experiencing runway issues.
—> was “encouraged” by our original investors to close the company down and “move-on” to my next venture, in lieu of trying to turn things around.
—> raised bridge financing on very onerous terms to help “live to fight another day”.
—> accumulated millions of dollars in debt as a result.
—> pivoted from a failed b2b monetization strategy to a b2c revenue model.
—> original b2c pricing model failed.
—> successfully transitioned to a freemium b2c subscription revenue model.
—> one month after the transition, Covid hit and major uncertainty ensued.
—> had to secure a PPP loan to extend runway.
—> after successfully navigating through Covid, we inked a major marketing deal with LinkedIn and started to scale.
—> 18 months later LinkedIn unexpectedly backed-out of the deal and we lost 95% of our member growth overnight.
—> 1 month later, SVB went under which had 95% of our cash, and left us with only 1 month of cash reserves as a result.
Whew! How many founders would have given-up at this point? I suspect most.
Fast forward to today…
- we found new marketing channels and reinvigorated member growth.
- we’re now up to 800k+ registered members and counting!
- we’ve had 5 straight years of revenue growth, profitability growth and cash-flow growth, with very strong margins.
- we’ve paid millions of dollars back to our investors, and are soon to be debt-free.
- the majority of our team has been with us for multiple years, and turnover is very low.
- we have a plan that’ll get us to $10 million in revenue in a year or two.
As the old adage goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.
Similar to a parent never giving-up on their child, as a founder you never give-up on the company you started, especially if you see potential in it.
And as Jimmy Valvano (RIP) once famously said, “Don't give up. Don't ever give up.”
Happy 10-year anniversary ExecThread. Here’s to 10 more years!
Grit
Persistence
Perseverance
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