Bootstrapping EmailOctopus to $3m+ ARR - Jonathan Bull & Tom Evans

Indie Bites

Today I’m joined by Tom Evans and Jonathan Bull from EmailOctopus, an email platform who have bootstrapped to over $3m ARR since they were founded in 2014. They’ve been battling in a crowded and competitive market, with some huge funded companies to contend with, but they’ve made it work in an indie way. In this episode we talk about how they lost 99% of their users overnight, why they’ve chosen to compete on price rather than in a niche and their reasoning behind staying bootstrapped for so long.

Get the extended episode here: https://indiebites.com/membership

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:24 EmailOctopus Background
• 02:57 How long did EmailOctopus take to build?
• 03:09 Launching for free
• 05:45 Tom joining EmailOctopus
• 07:11 Growth
• 07:48 Building in a crowded market
• 08:55 Differentiating on price
• 11:30 Raising vs bootstrapping
• 12:58 Changing goals as a bootstrapper
• 15:07 Fulfilling the side project urge

Recommendations

• Book: ReWork, Four Thousand Weeks
• Podcast: The Rest is Politics, Indie Bites
• Indie Hacker: Pieter Levels, Jeffrey Bunn

Guest Links

• Jonathan's Twitter
• Tom's Twitter
• Blog post about their growth

My links

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Indie Bites YouTube
• Join the membership
• Personal Website
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)
• This Indie Life Podcast

Sponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙

EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.