James Ashford, GoProposal
How a £4,000 WordPress Plugin Became a Bootstrapped SaaS Exit
James Ashford is the founder of GoProposal, a proposal and pricing platform for accountants which he bootstrapped and sold for an 8-figure sum. James didn't have a tech background. He wasn't an accountant. And he'd never built software before. But he noticed something broken: accountants couldn't price their services. They'd guess fees based on what the last client paid. Proposals took days. Deals fell through because people got busy. So he built a simple solution. A digital menu that let any staff member price and close deals in 15 minutes. The first version? A WordPress plugin that cost £4,000 to build. Before writing a single line of code, James did something unusual. He calculated how much money he needed to never work again (£5 million), identified the companies that might acquire his business (Sage, Intuit, Xero), and printed their logos on his wall. This wasn't optimism - it was his bootstrapped SaaS exit strategy from day one. To crack the accounting industry as an outsider, he traded 10% of his software company for 10% of an accounting firm. Instant credibility. Then he wrote a book in two weeks, made it an Amazon bestseller, and used it to build a waitlist of hundreds before launch. His marketing philosophy was simple: market like a celebrity chef. Gordon Ramsay shows you how to cook his recipes for free. You still go to his restaurant. James gave away everything - the methodology, the frameworks, the exact playbook. People still bought the software because they wanted it done faster. The bootstrapped SaaS approach forced creativity. When he realized a single conference cost £25,000, he hired a full-time videographer instead. Twelve months later, the pandemic hit. Competitors who relied on events were stuck. GoProposal dominated online. By the time he sold, GoProposal had over 1,100 customers, a 78 NPS score, and playbooks for every single process in the business. Three potential acquirers approached him within months of each other. The exit price? 8 figures. The multiple? One he still doesn't publicly share because it was "crazy."
