1. MailChimp
2. Calendly
3. LeaseQuery

MailChimp is one of the very few tech unicorns that hasn’t raised a penny from venture capitalists. Back in 2019 they generated over $700M in revenue and they are still private, bootstrapped and profitable to this day.

Calendly used very little resources in their early days to reach profitability and instead of going after investors right after their early traction, they decided to double down on customers which eventually led them to skipping their Seed round AND Series A round to go straight to a Series B round raising $350M at a $3B valuation. They just hit $85M in revenue with 20M customers.

“Our profitable, unique, product-led growth model has led to Calendly becoming the most used, most integrated, most loved scheduling platforms for individuals and large enterprises alike” – Tope Awotona, Founder/CEO

LeaseQuery became one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the US that was profitable, bootstrapped, had 500+ customers, and was largely staffed with 100+ employees back in 2019. Fast forward to today, similar to Calendly, their extreme focus on customers early led them to skip their Pre-seed round and Seed round to raise a $40M Series A round led by Goldman Sachs.

“The answer to any VC question is paying customers.” – @GeorgeSomeone, Founder or @LeaseQuery pic.twitter.com/ZoBlTkCuNd

— Square One Startup School (@SquareOneSchool) May 24, 2021

CUSTOMERS = CONTROL

Each of the companies listed above control their own destiny and equity all due to the fact they are/were laser focused on their customers. By focusing on generating Revenue in the early stages your company becomes more valuable because you are bypassing the “figure it out” or “product-market-fit” stage since you have a growing rate of repeat PAYING customers which allows you to use that traction as leverage to negotiate the founder-friendly terms you want with VC’s when it’s time to scale up and raise capital, IF that’s the route you want to take.

WHAT IF YOU’RE PRE-REVENUE?

This is why we built Square One Startup School, a 10-week virtual pre-accelerator, to help pre-revenue founders around the world take control of their startup destiny by helping them gain their first paying customers to unlock more scalable opportunities.

The two things pre-seed investors look for are sales and sign-ups and over the course of 10-weeks we help you hit the necessary milestones needed to get you to the next level in your startup journey.

So if you are founder who is pre-revenue or pre-seed apply to our upcoming cohort HERE.

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