My startup made $2M before I sold it. Here are 16 things I learned

I launched my SaaS company, Encharge, in 2019 with less than $1,000 in my account, no funding, no network, no audience, and no accelerators. It generated $2 million before we sold it. Here are 17 things I learned from it.

1. Startups are a last-man-standing game.

The one to win is not the fastest, smartest, or best. It's the most persistent and resilient.

2. If someone tells you there's a right or wrong way to run a startup, they are wrong.

I've seen startups in all kinds of verticals, from tiny tools making millions to huge tools with no revenue, B2C, B2B, and everything in between, technically challenging and easy. There's no one-size-fits-all formula.

3. Beware of specialized experts preaching their method.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Every expert will sell their method, based on their reference experience and case studies. Not necessarily a bad motive in mind, it's just how they view the world. We tried cold outbound 3 times with different cold outbound experts and agencies, and it never worked. In the meantime, SEO was raking in all the revenue.

4. You can build a lifestyle business on almost any startup idea, even if bad.

It will be just radically harder and might feel like eating glass. The idea is a multiplier of your effort. You can build a business to a point where it generates enough money to support you, even when the multiplier is 0.

5. Getting people to pay for your idea does not always mean you have validated it

Be careful of selling $100 bills for $50. E.g., when you offer a lifetime deal or your personal time for services. Ideally, you want to get someone to pay you for a real problem. But finding real problems is tough (next point).

6. If you're targeting a saturated market, you need to look for implicit signals and incremental solutions, not "hair-on-fire" problems.

Everybody says fix the "hair-on-fire" problem, but that's hard to find if you are aiming at over-saturated spaces. People in them usually have too many solutions, paying for many and not even using some of them. That doesn't mean you can't identify angels to enter the market with incremental improvements. The success multiplier will be smaller, though.

7. Don't get sidetracked with all the marketing and sales opportunities.

If you are small, double down on the one channel that works for you. For us, that was organic traffic.

8. Consistency compounds, but slowly.

It took us 3+ years to reach meaningful traction, and we were making $2k MRR in the first 2 years. Unfortunately, there's no formula to know whether you are on the right track or running a zombie. Sunk cost vs. strategic persistence. You bet with your time.

9. SaaS multiples are often fantasy, especially for smaller businesses.

If you are below $1M ARR and/or have no aggressive growth potential, do not expect 7-12x multipliers.

10. Lifetime deal buyers aren't your real customers.

They can give you psychological validation, but they won't save your business. Make sure to segment your feature request and feedback between recurring customers and the rest. This applies to free users, too.

11. You only know if your founder is a good fit when your startup struggles.

First, it's the honeymoon phase, excited to start a new business. Then comes the though painful slug and extreme pressure to pivot. This is where most founders quit or move on to the next promising idea. Or stay and become a jointed powerhouse.

12. AppSumo can be a game-changer, but timing and market positioning matter.

Our $990k AppSumo launch worked because we had the perfect storm of conditions. There weren't any other good marketing automation tools in their marketplace at that time. We didn't create the demand. We just happened to be positioned when the market had a gap.

13. Frugality is a competitive advantage, not just survival.

We stayed profitable by being super frugal. This wasn't just about bootstrapping, it forced us to focus on what actually moved the needle.

14. Technical complexity doesn't guarantee success

Building more features, next feature fallacy, reaching feature parity with competitors. None of them is a guarantee for growth. That said, mature markets simply have higher tablestakes entry levels. That's why many micropreneurs focus on single-point solutions.

15. Founder-product fit is a must

Ask yourself – would I work on this for at least 5 years before starting it?

16. Hiring hesitation always costs more than waiting.

I learned to "only hire people when I feel 'hell yes' for them." The cost of a bad hire in a small team is big, it's better to stay understaffed than to bring on the wrong person.

17. You can actually close customers at conferences.

One of our first and biggest customers came from SaaStock. But you have to be strategic about talking with the right leads and arranging meetings before the conference.

I'm starting a new startup. If you want to follow my journey, check my blog.kalo.me where I share everything in public!