Bootstrapped, profitable and proud: WooThemes
Published in 2010, this chronicle by @adamhowell details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
Excellent!
If you're in Europe, you might want to come see Adii speak at at my bootstrap conference set in Vienna, Austria. We haven't announced speakers formally yet, but he was the first one to say yes. (I'm gonna bring the bootstrap mentality to Europe if it kills me!)
A few more details are up on http://schnitzelconf.com ↗.
An interesting thing about WooThemes: Their products are all GPL'd. There's a bunch of sites exploiting this by reselling their entire theme collection as a bundle for about 1% of the normal price.
Great interview.
I don't think they said it here, but when I interviewed Adii, he revealed for the first time that his company exceeded $2 mil in annual revenue.
Their "Permanent 3-for-1: Buy any one of our WP themes, and get two more FREE!" and "Can't choose a single theme? Join our theme club and get them all for only $125" deals make this seem like such an undesirable business model.
It's like the constant sales at low-rent retail stores.