What BloomNation raised and for whom
“the last one we raised about 20,000,000 from Andreessen, Spark, Ronnie Conway, a bunch of people, and it was helping local florists.”
Founder conversationBuilder <$5m
How Whippy Doubled to a $4M Run Rate Bootstrapped After Leaving a VC-Backed Startup
David Daneshgar explains why he left BloomNation, which raised about $20M, to bootstrap Whippy, and how outbound outreach to a competitor's customers landed its first use case.
David Daneshgar · Whippy
Published March 12, 2024About this resource
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What you’ll learn
David Daneshgar, co-founder of Whippy, explains why he left the VC-backed BloomNation, which raised about $20M, to bootstrap an AI texting and automation platform. Whippy now has roughly 600 to 700 customers at an average of about $600 a month and is at about a $4M run rate, double a year earlier. He argues that bootstrapping forces real demand and plans to reach $10M in ARR within 24 months through partnerships and white labeling.
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Optionality of not raising
“if you don't raise, you have the option. You can do it on your terms. You don't look needy.”
Mining a rival's customer list
“Zipwhip was bought by Twilio and went out of business. So there was a feast for all the customers. And, like, we just started this. So I was able to pull a list from Zipwhip and then feed that to someone on Upwork to, like, get deeper into the data.”
Stripe link as a demand test
“Like, here's the Stripe link. It's 6,000. Do you wanna put in your credit card? Like, the truth really hurts or or you see that.”
Partnerships and white labeling for growth
“You push people to us. There there could be like an affiliate rev share there. That and white labeling, stuff like that, I think, would be a big part of the growth over the next twenty four months.”
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David Daneshgar
Co-Founder · Whippy
- Company revenue
- $4M
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