Bootstrapping·Dean McPherson, Paperform:

Paperform: How a Developer Bootstrapped a SaaS to $1.5M+ ARR

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Dean McPherson is the co-founder of Paperform, a SaaS product that enables anyone to create beautiful online forms, payment, or product pages, quickly and intuitively, without any technical knowledge.

It was 2016 and Dean was working as a developer in Sydney, Australia. After doing some work building online forms, he believed there was a gap in the market for a different type of form building product.

As a developer, turning his idea into a minimum viable product (MVP) wasn't hard. But getting the word out about his product and finding customers was a whole different ballgame.

He promoted his product on Betalist without much success But it did help to his product on AppSumo teams' radar, and he was invited to do a launch with them.

After scrambling to get his MVP ready for the launch, he managed to land 3000 customers. But every AppSumo customer paid a one-time lifetime price – so he still had zero recurring revenue.

But it did give him enough money to quit his job and work on the product full-time with this wife. They basically operated as a lifestyle business for a couple of years.

Eventually, Dean realized that if he wanted the business to grow, he needed to think about it differently, start hiring a team, and getting a lot more serious about marketing – something neither he nor his wife knew much about.

Today his company does over $1.5 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) and is still bootstrapped.

In this interview, we talk about he's grown his idea into a 7-figure business, how he figured out how to differentiate his product in a crowded market, and how hiring his first employees was a scary decision but turned to be one of the best things he's done for his business.

I hope you enjoy it.

This episode is part of our Bootstrapping series.

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