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Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today
Hello HN,
I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141
Today, I sold the company to a private equity firm for $200mn.
It's covered on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/23/everstone-acquires-bootstrapped-indian-startup-wingify-for-200m/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/23/everstone-acquires-bootstr...
I was a 22 year old fresh graduate when I launched VWO on HN and got initial users. Feedback from people like @patio11 helped me get to PMF. And now, 15 years later, "site:ycombinator.com" is what I appended when I wanted to search for advice on what to keep in mind while selling my company.
Thank you HN for sharing inspiration and wisdom all along. I honestly don't think I would have been an entrepreneur had it not been for hacker news.
Every single day, HN is the first website I open! I'm feeling very grateful towards the community. Thanks @dang, and thank you Paul Graham for your essays and for creating this beautiful corner of the internet!
- nanoflite 2y agoSorry guys, this is sad news for the world. You just made the divide between ultra rich and ultra poor larger. And please, don't start complaining on how hard it was.
- tinktank 2y agoYou do the same when you accept your salary every month. Start by giving that up.
- MikeTaylor 2y agoHow tragic that the goal of startups isn't to make something useful but to get acquired (with consequent inevitable dismemberment and shuttering). Well done on the $200M, I guess.
- vixen99 2y agoTragic? I don't follow that. If the goal isn't to make something useful in one way or another then why would a startup enterprise ever get acquired?
- max-privatevoid 2y agoIs "makes the producer a lot of money" the only factor you consider when thinking of a good product?
- prashp 2y ago[flagged]
- vosper 2y agoMaybe they would find those activities fulfilling? It’s their life, and wealth, after all.
- jorams 2y agoFor what it's worth gp is a reference to this post[1], in which the author does not. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873
- vosper 2y agoI see, thanks. I wasn't aware of the reference :)
- gsf_emergency_2 2y agoTexas hills are also an option, if Himalayas are not in your backyard :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42806991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42806991 This guy has taken the (conceptual) step beyond viscerality-as-a-salve: https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2025/01/22/death-of-the-visceral.html https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2025/01/22/deat...
- dang 2y agoPlease don't take HN threads in sour and bitter directions like that. We want curious conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tarunkotia 2y agoCongratulations!
- toomuchtodo 2y agoCongrats on the successful exit and your journey to it!
- sandeep_kamble 2y agoCongratulations Paras, you made it! Looking forward to your next gig!
- arey_abhishek 2y agoCongratulations! This is such a great story. I’ve followed you for years and your success is inspiring
- ignoramous 2y agoGreat run, Paras! If I may: - Did VWO ever apply to YC? - Do you foresee PE asset stripping (crashing & burning) VWO eventually? - What's next (5y time period)? Thanks.
- paraschopra 2y ago- No, never applied to YC. - Not expecting this to happen - I plan to explore starting a fundamental AI lab from India (China has Deepseek, US has OpenAI and Anthropic, Japan has Sakana - India doesn't have one yet!)
- ignoramous 2y ago> explore starting a fundamental AI lab from India I saw the back & forth between you and Aravind (pplx.ai) on Twitter. Impactful if you'd go down the FOSS route [0]. How soon are you expecting to start working on this? Are you hiring? [0] I co-develop FOSS security tools for Android and considering building more to counter fraud (local languages is a barrier): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42785568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42785568
- srirangr 2y agoCongrats Paras! Great to see a bootstrapped success story from someone that I have been following for over a decade. Kudos!
- guynamedloren 2y agoIncredible. Congrats, enjoy the fruits of your hard work!
- duxup 2y agoCongratulations. I'm curious... what do people do after something like this? Vacation?
- nico 2y ago“I am rich and I have no idea what to do” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579873
- andrepd 2y ago[flagged]
- dylan604 2y agoI would hope some time off is possible, but I could totally see myself self-funding the next thing immediately after that time off. I'm guessing the bootstrapping types would get bored and look for the next thing
- klik99 2y agoI met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had. A year on he hadn’t moved out of his small apartment, still contracted, still used the same cheap phone, and hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc. it struck me as the smartest move, take your time to come up with a plan and don’t just dive into recklessly spending it. I also know a founder couple I was close friends with who had a sizeable exit, who moved to Costa Rica where they could spend little and focus on writing, a side interest that ended up leading to their next company. I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.
- criddell 2y ago> I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed. It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do. When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money. Lots of it would be spent on hiring experts to teach me things.
- tikkun 2y agoAwesome. For others, I see that Paras is now running https://turingsdream.co/ https://turingsdream.co/ "an AI hackhouse running a six-week residency for coders and researchers who're interested in AI. The hackhouse is in Bangalore, India and you can join it either in-person, or in a hybrid fashion."
- paraschopra 2y agoThanks for linking it here. If there are any AI researchers or engineers in Bangalore/India lurking here, please consider applying.
- crypto2025 2y agoHey paras I'm a doctor sitting in Australia. But have some analytical and coding skills and can have 3 startups which all failed to scale. I'm full time grinder and wokring on 505b2 FDA approval system. Off patient medications into market a knowledge graph system designed to convince the fda. I'd like to Jon the 6 week finger bleeder.
- captn3m0 2y agoI attended Paras’a talk at the last graduation day for the residency. I’m amazed at how he was able to do all that, while dealing with the acquisition due diligence.
- lazyeye 2y agoOff to /r/fatfire for you
- rikthevik 2y agoBig congratulations!
- amendegree 2y agoSo happy for you! Great job on growing to 50mil! I’m curious how this process got started, did you approach them or did they reach out? Are you still gonna be involved day to day, or are you taking a much deserved break?
- paraschopra 2y agoI had been reducing my day to day involvement for a few years, and then we hired an investment banker who drove the process. I won't be involved day to day anymore.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoCongrats! Since it seems you're based in India, I hope you can continue to invest in other promising Indian startups in the coming years!
- paraschopra 2y agoYes, I'm running https://turingsdream.co https://turingsdream.co and intend to do a lot more of helping others going forward.
- klik99 2y agoCongratulations!
- croes 2y agoIs it the final goal to get acquired?
- handfuloflight 2y agoPerhaps we can change the goals if death wasn't going to acquire us all.
- dinkumthinkum 2y agoCongratulations to you! It's great to see the hard work coming to fruition.
- senordevnyc 2y agoI really appreciate this post, especially after some of the recent ones about how we're in a startup winter. I'm bootstrapping a project on the side (although I acquired it as a POC, didn't build from scratch), and whether it's "realistic" or not, stories like this are still inspiring. Thank you!
- paraschopra 2y agoGood luck!
- nexarithm 2y agoAre you planning to write blog post of the journey? It is always joyful to read about process and details about such acquisitions. I remember couple shared in HN and got lots of interest such as waze. Congratulations!
- paraschopra 2y agoWhat would you like to know about the process?
- rexreed 2y agoI'd love to learn about PMF and which posts from HN were most helpful. Even a few pointers in the thread here would be awesome.
- paraschopra 2y agoI've written a lot of my lessons here: https://invertedpassion.com/free-book-mental-models-for-startup-founders/ https://invertedpassion.com/free-book-mental-models-for-star...
- rexreed 2y agoThis is great, thanks both for writing these down and sharing!
- sillysaurusx 2y agoYour post https://invertedpassion.com/your-30-second-pitch-shouldnt-be-about-you/ https://invertedpassion.com/your-30-second-pitch-shouldnt-be... applies not just to business but to life in general. Talking about someone else and focusing on what they want is how to make friends (and other benefits). I really like your site. It’s kind of the inverse of pg: not really essays, but still focused and numerous, even if short. It manages to be general without being shallow: there are so many interesting topics that it’s hard not to get pulled in, which for me was reminiscent of stumbling on pg’s essays in 2007. Thanks!
- handfuloflight 2y agoCongratulations! Did you reach out or did they?
- phtrivier 2y agoGood for you ! Are you completely exiting the company, or will you still run the product, if only in part ? Are you leaving a team behind ? I'm very curious about how to approach such a moment. There are so many horror stories where an acquisition ends up being "bad news" for teams and users alike - I hope this won't be the case here !
- dowager_dan99 2y agolinked TC story says "owned 70%... retaining a small ownership"
- speakfreely 2y agoIt's very common in transactions of this size that the seller "rolls" some equity, I.e. retains some ownership moving forward. The buyer likes this because it theoretically keeps them invested in the future of the company and the seller potentially gets a second bite when the PE firm flips the business.
- adeptima 2y agoInspiration for all of us. Congrats!
- sainib 2y agoCongratulations Paras! Great milestone. Please share more details for your journey and learnings as a blog post.
- refrigerator 2y agoAmazing, congrats man!!
- devops000 2y agoCould you share your Revenue and EBITDA of last 3 years? I am interested to understand multiplies. Did you sell all-cash or 51% cash + other?
- packetslave 2y agowhat an intrusive, nosy question!
- wnolens 2y agoI mean.. the guy posted on a public forum "I just made $142M!"
- s1artibartfast 2y agoSome founders are very open about these things. It doesn't hurt to ask. They might even have a public blog about they can link to.
- _1tem 2y agoWow, what an inspiring story? Care to share any stats, such as team size, when you hit your first ARR milestones, or anything else?
- ignoramous 2y agoToday, we're a team of 250+ people and seen that initial "Show HN" grow into a $20mn+ bootstrapped business (no VC funding). If anyone's interested in reading more, I've blogged this journey (from launch to now) on our website [0] from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 (2020) [0] clicky: https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/ https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/
- sureglymop 2y agoI checked out the explainer video from 15 years ago in the linked blog post. It's crazy but this would still get me interested even today! Wow.
- paraschopra 2y agoWe hit our first million in 18 months when we were ~10 (I think). My first milestone was $1000 (my salary before starting Wingify). The first month I launched, made $4000 and it kept doubling from there for a while. I remember being glued to the customer and revenue chart for the first few years. I had even coded a small utility to make a small ka-ching sound on my laptop whenever we get a new customer :)
- sebastiennight 2y agoHa ha, I had coded the same kind of utility in 2007 in my first business, to send me an SMS whenever there was a purchase. (and my phone was set up to go "ka-ching!" for SMSes from that number) Turns out I had a bug in my code, and I got a text every time someone visited the page, which meant at the end of launch day I had lost money by paying more in SMS fees than I made in sales for the day!
- dang 2y agoI put this post in the second-chance pool* as soon as I found out about it, but given that the startup is India, I think Paras might also be, in which case he may be offline for a while! (Edit: and will have rather a lot of responses waiting for him when that changes...) * https://news.ycombinator.com/pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
- paraschopra 2y agoYes, thank you! I was indeed sleeping and just woke up.
- firefoxd 2y agoMy employer picked vwo over my own custom in house ab testing tool [0]. I was so pissed! Congrats, yours was the better tool. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23471050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23471050
- dang 2y agoHere's that earlier thread - thanks for pointing it out! Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 - June 2020 (128 comments)
- jcheng 2y agoThere's no higher praise than "I built my own; yours was better"!
- kinderjaje 2y agoWell said! Honesty is best.
- paraschopra 2y agoThanks!
- lalwanivikas 2y agohello ex-boss! congrats :D
- FlyingSnake 2y agoCongratulations Paras! I’ve been following your story since it’s inception and it’s incredible what you’ve achieved. Best of luck for your next endeavours.
- deadbabe 2y agoI’m sure you made a lot of money on this exit, but given that your company was sold for so much it must mean you had already been making good money before the sale? Why sell?
- paraschopra 2y agoI wasn't involved in day to day that much, and felt it was the right time to pass the baton.
- deadbabe 2y agoI find I can barely bring myself to sell off stocks in a company that’s doing well, unless my future outlook has changed. Did you anticipate there are changes coming that will require these businesses to radically change their products in order to survive?
- richardw 2y agoWow! I used you back in the day. Good work, Paras.
- devops000 2y agoCongratulation!
- fatnoah 2y agoWow, payoff after 15 years. Congratulations!
- XCSme 2y agoSo I just need 2 more years :D and then +$49.98m/year revenue will come
- pantulis 2y agoCongratulations! I remember using VWO in 2013, outstanding product!
- romanzubenko 2y agoAmazing outcome, congratulations! Back in 2015 working at Gusto as the first growth engineer I remember reading vwo blog to understand how a/b testing works.
- paraschopra 2y agoAll of our initial growth came from either word of mouth or the content I was churning out on a daily basis.
- ulf-77723 2y agoCongrats! What have been your highest highs and lowest lows during this journey? When Google discontinued their A/B Testing tool - was it surprising for you? How has the CRO landscape changed out of your perspective in the last 15 years? 1st party tracking, serverside testing, etc.
- paraschopra 2y agoI think the low was covid - with budget cuts, we had a sudden revenue drop and didn't know when or whether it will recover at all. But thankfully as we had been profitable from day 1, we didn't lay off anyone. The high is every time we launched a new feature that set the industry standard. (For example, integrating heatmaps into A/B tests and migration from frequentist to bayesian statistics). Another high has always been our annual international trips - we had been taking our entire company to a vacation every year. As a company, Wingify team has vacationed together in Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Dubai, Nepal, and Goa. Most recently, ~400 people partied together on a boat in Bangkok, and it was a high! Yes, Google discontinuing their A/B testing tool was a surprise (but a pleasant one obviously). CRO over the last 15 years has shifted in maturity. It started with testing red v/s green buttons in 2010 but now it is a full blown science with observations, hypothesis, prioritisation, experimentation and personalization!
- shostack 2y agoWhat do you think of the increasingly sparse measurement data available to marketers and the rise of needing to focus on measuring incrementality through statistical experiments when smaller companies may not have enough data to obtain statsig results?
- paraschopra 2y agoWhen you don't have enough data, doing usability tests and understanding + applying best practices can help you avoid common mistakes.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
- adityapuranik 2y agoCongratulations Paras! Been following you for a while on Twitter, love the book recos!
- marsven_422 2y ago[dead]
- dcdgo 2y agoReally inspiring to hear your success story Mr. Chopra. I showed it to my coworkers and we're all impressed.
- gigatexal 2y agoThis post made my day. What a dope shoutout to everyone. Congrats to you! and your team and everyone who got paid. Congrats again!
- thiago_fm 2y agoHoly shit you killed it! Congratulations. You are an inspiration for us, that didn't make it (yet).
- paraschopra 2y agoGood luck!
- thiago_fm 2y agoHoly shit, you've made it! You are an inspiration for us, those who haven't made it. I've been around for a similar time and never even ran my own company. I hope one day to hit a homerun like you did. You deserved it. Cheers!
- janosch_123 2y agoAnother overnight success - after 16 years of work. Well done, very inspiring.
- XCSme 2y agoCongrats! I am curious where do you think VWO is heading now? If people buy it, they expect growth, I assume. I guess the plan is to expand? Either through marketing or extending the product scope? I was surprised by this: > Delhi-based Wingify has grown from a two-person startup into a profitable global software provider with over 6,000 clients So 6000 clients is enough for a $50mn/year revenue? Enterprise is where the money at!
- pulkitsh1234 2y agoCongrats Paras !
- 2024user 2y agoThat's awesome.. huge congrats!
- neilv 2y agoCongrats! Questions: * Are you happy with the journey, and the time horizon to exit? * As advice to the impatient, do you have any insight into whether a sufficiently big exit could've been sooner?
- paraschopra 2y ago- Yes, I'm very happy! - Advice, paradoxically, is to not gun for an exit. Only companies that don't need an exit get an exit. (It's sort of like dating).
- justmarc 2y agoI remember you launching this! I even used it and it was one if not the best at the time! Well deserved.
- mhog_hn 2y agoCongratulations Paras :)
- anonzzzies 2y agoWell done! Some good questions here; hope you get a chance to answer them.
- ryanmerket 2y agoMassive congrats! Good to see the dream is still alive and well!
- mattfrommars 2y agoCongrats! What made you commit and build this project when you were 22 year old vs million others SAAS you could have built at that time? Say, a CRM to compete with Salesforce, or a new web based Excel or web based Photoshop tool?
- paraschopra 2y agoThis was my 5th startup. During my college days I kept launching startups (Kroomsa, Precimark, MyJugaad.in). Failure of all these made me introspect and I realized I was trapped into the engineer's fallacy: build things without knowing or caring about how to market them. This pushed me to learn marketing and I fell deeper into the rabbit hole. So, my next attempt was build a marketing suite as I was learning a lot about what works and what doesn't. But even that turned out to be a dud as I put too many features into it. But I did launch it on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 and got a few users. Users found the UX too complicated and I got feedback to focus on 1 among the 10s of features I had added. See this comment by @patio11 >because you pack an AWFUL lot onto that first screen So as my next iteration, I picked A/B testing and made a visual editor to make creation of A/B tests stupidly simple and that took off because it allowed marketers launch A/B tests without being reliant on developers. This product, Visual Website Optimizer (VWO), took off!
- mattfrommars 2y agoThanks for this. To get it straight, you decided to go for marketing niche has it was an industry that obsessed you. From their, feedback allowed to focus on one thing and do it well. This makes sense as you probably stretched yourself too thin. But the thing I don't get is, what was the trigger/pivot that made you go for 'A/B/ testing and not another segment of marketing niche? At that time, weren't there other players in A/B segment who were far more established? What competitive edge did you see that made you go all in in A/B and which eventually took off?
- paraschopra 2y agoI picked A/B testing because I discovered the most used product (Google Website Optimizer, now defunkt) was pretty crappy. As an engineer, I couldn't figure out how to use it and it was meant for marketers. So I sensed an opportunity within the A/B testing niche. In fact, the name Visual Website Optimizer comes from the fact that it did with Google Website Optimizer did, but visually (in an editor, instead of HTML code). Optimizely started at the same time as us. They went to YC and raised a bunch of money. We remained bootstrapped.
- soheil 2y agoHere is what the site looked like initially - so don't be scared that everything has to look perfect and shiny. Plans start at $49/month https://web.archive.org/web/20140701054439/https://vwo.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140701054439/https://vwo.com/ and now $393 per month, billed annually https://vwo.com/pricing/ https://vwo.com/pricing/ They sure did listen to @patio11
- paulpauper 2y ago3 letter .com. pretty impressive to get one of those
- soheil 2y agomeh if you're racking up $100k/mo you could probably afford one. Here are some auction on Godaddy: wmr.com $5,000 Min. Offer pox.com $95,000 Buy Now otp.com $100,000 Min. Offer
- flyinglizard 2y agoInspiring. Congrats!
- elevatedastalt 2y agoCongratulations! Just curious, usually being purchased by a Private Equity firm spells a death knell for the company. Of course at the right price it makes sense that you wanted to sell it away, but what are your thoughts about what will happen to the company now?
- bigiain 2y agoJust as a counter point, private equity seems to have helped WPEngine become so successful that Mullenweg has totally lost his mind over it.
- gobengo 2y agoprivate equity + a whole lot of commons to encircle
- swozey 2y agoAnd WordPress can thank CPanel and the tens of thousands of customer support and sysadmins that supported millions of WordPress users at $9/mo for a decade and have never once interacted or known who Mullenweg is. And they can thank mysql.. and apache.. and php.. Take your money and be happy. I met some of the worst people (CEOs) working in webhosting. Some truly awful people became very rich. edit; I thought this was referencing old drama. This is brand new. www.reddit.com/r/wpdrama. I don't know anything about Mullenweg, I don't mean to sound like I'm calling him awful specifically.
- bigiain 2y agoThis brand new drama (well, August/Sept vintage drama) reveals a _lot_ about Mullenweg. I, for one, am happy to specifically call him awful.
- sillysaurusx 2y agoCould anyone summarize the drama? I’ve been poking around the subreddit, and it’s clear something is going on (https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7931urG9ho https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7931urG9ho) but it’s not clear what he actually did. https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7eoTXQnwhh https://www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/s/7eoTXQnwhh is as close to an explanation as I’ve found, but it seems tangential to whatever kickstarted the drama in the first place.
- juhanakristian 2y agoCongrats! Would be interesting to see the growth rate of the company.
- rwalling 2y agoBravo, @paraschopra What an incredible journey. I remember when you launched. I hadn't realized it was 16 years ago! I'll hit you up privately with an invite to tell your story on Startups for the Rest of Us. It's a fitting place for a bootstrapper like yourself.
- paraschopra 2y agoAwesome! Yes, indeed 16 years is a long period. But I was lucky to have been exposed to HN during the early years. I remember interacting with you!
- ExxKA 2y agoI should have guessed this was your handle Rob :) I listen to your podcast whenever I need a boost, but somehow never made the connection that you are one of "us", here. If you'd like to get some scandi guys on your show, I am a GP at www.likeminded.vc, and connected into the community around Copenhagen and the nordics.
- cabinguy 2y agoWhat a great story & ending. I’m very happy for you - congratulations!
- fbfactchecker 2y ago[dead]
- didip 2y agoCongratulations. Now tell us stories when things were hard and you almost gave up. Bet you have a lot of stories like this.
- paraschopra 2y agoYep, but over time they make you stoic and that stoicism helps outside of startups too.
- nivals 2y agoLong time user. Great product. Strong willed execution. Congrats to you!
- twapi 2y agoWhat an incredible achievement! Congratulations @paraschopra
- manav 2y agoCongrats Paras.
- constantlm 2y agoCongrats! I used VWO extensively in a previous life as a "growth hacker".
- l2silver 2y agoHey Chopra, Thanks for sharing, this is really inspiring! Just wondering, for other bootstrappers, if you do end up selling for, I don't know, $200 million letsay, how does that money generally get split? What percentage of the company did you own before selling, and what were the tradeoffs when selling ownership?
- petekoomen 2y agoCongratulations, @paraschopra! A great and well-deserved outcome :)
- sedatk 2y agoCongrats! Was the "Show HN" feedback useful, and did it affect how you developed the product?
- paraschopra 2y agoYes, yes, so much yes. Without the feedback, this wouldn't have happened. I've learned that what kills startups isn't so much a bad product, but lack of feedback. You can iterate your way out of a valley if you know which way is up.
- mikepalmer 2y ago> You can iterate your way out of a valley if you know which way is up. love this, I think this is my new personal motto!
- paul7986 2y agoVery nice and congrats. Yet sharing the cost of the sale I'd be concerned about doing that on the public Internet.
- pranade 2y agoCongrats Paras – amazing story!
- mooreds 2y agoCongrats. Thanks for closing the loop. So many stories/comments on the internet are left unresolved; it is nice to see a loop closed.
- aunty_helen 2y agoThe HN dream. Congrats and enjoy the fruits of your labor :D
- manish_gill 2y agoQuestion - What is typically the future of companies that are acquired by Private Equity firms? As a former employee of VWO who worked there for ~3 years, I'm curious about the future of the company.
- paraschopra 2y agoI think the plan is to keep growing profitably, but I'm also curious and keen to learn how private equity runs a company.
- manish_gill 2y agoSaw your posts. It's reassuring to hear that the leadership team will continue to operate the company! Good luck with everything, Paras. Have fun running the AI Lab :)
- harisenbon 2y agoCongratulations! I just checked when I started using VWO, and found a really nice exchange between you and me from Fri, Dec 11, 2009. VWO is still the absolute best split testing tool out there. You deserve all the success.
- edelwiess 2y agoThis here speaks so much more to the success. Actual customers praising the product.
- paraschopra 2y agoWow, Dec 2009 is literally when I had launched the MVP of VWO. So cool to hear this story from you! Brings back so many memories of anxious excitement and working till 3 am :)
- nojvek 2y agoVWO was bootstrapped? wow! Some of the PMs I worked with loved showing off what VWO could do with a few clicks. Great tool. Congrats on $200M! Paras, You're now an inspiration for millions of devs, especially from India on what is possible to build bootstrapped.
- orliesaurus 2y agoVWO vs Optimizely was the biggest internal debate back in 2017. Enemies were made, heads rolled... Congrats!
- paraschopra 2y agoHaha, yes - we were neck to neck often.
- dsiroker 2y ago(Co-founder of Optimizely here) Congrats! It was fun competing with you
- peterisdirsa 2y agoWhy "was"?
- statictype 2y agoOptimizely also sold to private equity many years ago. Presumably the founderts aren't there any more.
- paraschopra 2y agoDan, thank you! I has been fun competing with you. I remember the golden days :) I've been following your journey post Optimizely! Hope your new ventures turn out to be equally fun and fulfilling.
- murukesh_s 2y agoI think it was a time when bootstrapping was a thing.. I feel its scary for new startups to bootstrap since the last decade with huge fundings, especially with funding in billions becoming a normal with the ongoing AI craze. https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/largest-ai-startup-funding-deals-2024 https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/largest-ai-startup-funding-de...
- abhimanyue1998 2y agoAI inference is expensive, hence, funding is needed. In future, when AI infra becomes cheaper, we will see more bootstrapped AI startups too.
- waonderer 2y agoI think that's more skewed towards the AI startups. Other startups have rather seen a dip in recent times, at least in India.
- nothrowaways 2y agoCongrats
- ninjaa 2y agowow congrats!!
- DelightOne 2y agoCongratulations! I've got a small question. How do you deal with people asking for open sourcing your product/code, claiming they don't want to use a product they don't control?
- paraschopra 2y agoEnterprises don't ask that. We never got that request.
- patio11 2y agoCongrats! Thrilled for you and the team.
- paraschopra 2y agoThanks Patrick! This couldn't have happened without you. You have impacted more people than you may realize. I distinctly remember when I asked your feedback on my $9/mo plan, you told me to go for $99/mo. Baffled on how can someone pay so much for what I just coded, I settled for $49/mo. Should have listened to you.. :)
- kalid 2y agoCongrats Paras, really happy for you!
- richardfeynman 2y ago@paras - I worked at Optimizely in the early days and led online marketing there from 2012 - 2016. I remember seeing your team copy our SEM strategy, so I added Hindu gods (shiva, vishnu, et al) to the UTM query params in our ads for your guys to dissect / get a laugh from. Congrats on the exit. really nice to see.
- jacob_rezi 2y agowanna join Rezi? we dont have a marketing team but get 4K signups a day
- pryelluw 2y agoFriendly heads up that some thumbnail in your landing page are not loading. Specifically the ones that link to the sample resumes for a given title. The one for CTO and the one for compliance coordinator failed to load.
- richardfeynman 2y agothanks for this kind offer, but i'm working on something else.
- sillysaurusx 2y agoPhysics, no doubt.
- anne_deepa 2y agoAre you hiring engineers? I would love to join.
- paraschopra 2y agoHaha, I'll ask around if they ever figured out the query parameters :)
- shostack 2y agoAs a fellow marketer I've totally done similar stuff to send messages to whomever is digging through their utms. More usefully though, you can learn a shocking amount about a company from their utms and event data.
- dangoodmanUT 2y agoJust upvoted the original post, you earned it
- mattmaroon 2y agoDaaamn. RIP to your DMs as the kids say. Congrats!
- rco8786 2y agoMega congratulations. Great community here.
- tucnak 2y agoAnother brick in the wall
- bainganbharta 2y agoA lot of bootlicking in the comments.
- cushychicken 2y agoNothing to add except more congratulations to you. That’s a huge exit and you deserve to be incredibly proud of it.
- neofrommatrix 2y agoCongratulations; really impressive.
- babyent 2y agoCongrats! Thats wonderful.
- xp84 2y agoHey, cool! Former VWO customer here (it was my previous company). You guys made a good product and had a good revenue team selling it as well. Thrilled that you had a great exit!
- gk1 2y agoCongrats Paras. VWO has been my go-to A/B testing platform ever since everyone else either pivoted upmarket into six-figure “experience management platforms” or shut down (Google Experiments). I hope this won’t change!
- paraschopra 2y agoI'm hopeful that VWO will continue to stay true to its roots!
- sakerbos 2y agoThat's an epic win! 15 years of the startup grind/rollercoaster is impressive, well done!
- peterisdirsa 2y agoWhy"startup"? It's just a businesses, nothing special
- akww 2y agoEh? Did you really need to comment this?
- xyst 2y agoCongrats on the exit, but PE is going to saddle the company with unnecessary debt, extract as much value it can, charge “consulting fees”, then strip it for parts in bankruptcy. Customers are going to feel the squeeze in 1-2 years.
- jgenius07 2y agoThis is a big achievement. Used the tool along against Hotjar and the likes and loved VWO.
- actionable 2y agoCongrats Paras, I remember when I first found out about VWO in 2012. An amazing outcome and a testament to you and the value of staying the course over 15 years!
- badmonster 2y agocongrats
- quelup 2y agoCongrats, this is amazing!
- Amaresh 2y agoCongrats Paras. It's been fun to follow along the VWO journey!
- jeffreyq 2y agoso inspiring, congratulations!
- newusertoday 2y agoi remember reading your blog and following your journey in the initial years it was quite inspirational and i learned so many things along the way thanks to you and @patio11. Thanks for sharing and be open about it.
- plinkplonk 2y agoThis might be a dumb question, for which apologies in advance, but isn't 200 million a little low for a company with $ 50 million revenue? But maybe not, -- the profit is say $20 million and the acquirers are paying 10 X annual profit?
- chii 2y agoat $20mil profit, that's a 40% margin, which is quite high, even for a tech company (tho for a startup, which can be nimble and agile, it's not impossible).
- nfm 2y agoAnnual growth rate is typically a big factor in PE acquisition multiples. At a 4x multiple of ARR, I’d hazard a guess that this was on the lower side.
- paraschopra 2y agoIt's not a dumb question. But what I learned in this process is that companies are valued after incorporating many factors (liquidity, earnouts, future involvement, growth rate, profit, retention, current market mood, etc. etc.) and multiples we see reported in media are obviously sit at the outlier curves. I got a good deal overall (not just monetarily), and that's what I was shooting for.
- 7e 2y agoFor every one of these, there are 100 which are miserable failures, where the founders would have been better off with a career at FAANG.
- pbrum 2y agoFantastic, inspiring post. Congratulations x 200!
- advaitruia 2y agoCongratulations! This is great - one of the few globally successful SaaS cos from India with an exit!
- maxnevermind 2y agoWhy did you sell it?
- notcrazylol 2y ago@paraschopra congrats! Where and how did you go about learning marketing for startups? I am also currently building one and would love some pointers :) Thank you
- paraschopra 2y agoYou may not like this answer but the best starting point is to define marketing in the particular context and market in which your product exists. Marketing is so highly contextual that sometimes I don't even like the word.
- wbond 2y agoTotally random, but did you use Flourishlib (PHP) at some point ~15 years ago? Your name sounded familiar from a long-ago open source project. Either way, congrats on your hard work and success!
- paraschopra 2y agoWow, i vaguely recall using it!
- silexia 2y agoI have thought about selling to PE as well, I founded my company in 2009 as well. But I have seen too many times how PE breaks promises made to customers and employees and I think it is unethical to sell to them.
- rohityadavcloud 2y agoHappy for you - congratulations Paras, Sparsh and VWO. Did the (long-term) employees make anything?
- sparshgupta 2y agoThis is a big event for not just Paras and myself, but many in the team :)
- paraschopra 2y agoYes, they did.
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- manojsurya 2y ago[dead]
- singhshashi 2y agoMany Congratulations! Yours has been an inspirational journey for others in India looking to build for the world.
- havercosine 2y agoParas, as a an Indian founder, I've watched your journey for few years now. You are an inspiration and a thoughtful leader. Your "Mental Models for Startup Founders", is a very well written mirror for every founder to look into. Hope you get some nice time off and go back with vigour to Turing's Dream now...
- mixtureoftakes 2y ago15 years in tech is like a month in crypto
- howon92 2y agoCongrats! What made you not want to take any investments and what was the most counter intuitive thing that made you succeed?
- paraschopra 2y agoWe were always profitable and growing at a sustainable pace, so never needed funding. Most counter intuitive thing was to not think I was missing out on anything as we didn't have VCs backing us.
- tiagom87 2y agoCongrats Paras! ps: Your mental models blog/book should be taught in business schools.
- paraschopra 2y agoThanks! I've updated them and they'll be published as a book (+ released online) this year.
- devoutsalsa 2y agoCan I borrow $5? (joke) Congrats on the success!
- pkondle 2y agoCongrats Paras. I used VWO long time back and came away impressed. Looking to hear more great things from you.
- murukesh_s 2y agoWow congrats Paras! such an inspiring journey you had..
- anshulbhide 2y agoThis is what HN community is all about. Wholesome posts like this one :)
- paraschopra 2y agoI also want to thank my co-founder Sparsh for building the company with me. He deserves as much congrats as it's coming my way! (He sometimes lurks here on HN)! Couldn't have built Wingify without him! He'll continue to be associated with the company as the CEO and I feel rested knowing that :)
- sparshgupta 2y agoThanks
- keiferski 2y agoAnd now, 15 years later, "site:ycombinator.com" is what I appended when I wanted to search for advice on what to keep in mind while selling my company. There is a ton of great advice and information in the HN archives, so much so that it could be a startup idea itself.
- unit149 2y ago[dead]
- jdbohrman 2y agoCongratulations that's amazing. What are your next steps from here? Planning to continue or take a break?
- myuzio 2y agoI love how wholesome the comments are, probably the most wholesome thread about startups I've ever seen. congrats :)
- rvba 2y agoWill patio11 get a share?
- paraschopra 2y agoi owe him!
- rvba 2y agoThis means he wont?
- kylegalbraith 2y agoJust want to say congratulations on the journey and reaching such a massive accomplishment! Seeing a post like this on HN with all of the positive comments and thoughts is truly an inspiration.
- ayushpawar 2y agoinspirational stuff man!
- abhimanyue1998 2y agothis is the kind of stuff that motivates me to push through. cheers man, you are an inspiration.
- saurabhchalke 2y agoCongrats, Paras!
- vijayer 2y agoFounder of statsig here- congrats. Super inspiring story.
- paraschopra 2y agoThanks! Vijaye
- jsfunfun 2y agorelax and then find your way past the cash, and to being rich: love and beauty with you family
- williamjinq 2y agoCongrats! I’m also bootstrapping my SaaS business and hope to reach your level one day! Curious about your next steps—are you taking a break, or planning to build another startup?
- paraschopra 2y agoI plan to start an AI lab from India. I sense an opportunity - India's way behind China and US.
- casslin 2y agoamazing story! congrats!
- shahzaibmushtaq 2y agoAfter reading the words of VWO founder and the wholesome responses/comments, I can say that Humility at its finest. Congrats to Paras Chopra, and I applaud everyone for this gesture.
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- dzonga 2y agocongrats. for the things you achieved and the things you didn't do. you could've given many reasons of not starting e.g i'm in India - I need to move to the US etc, I can't access capital, too young etc. there's a lot of competitors etc. but you took the plunge anyway and got handsomely rewarded for it. congrats for your inspiring journey.
- paraschopra 2y agothe key was my naivety as a 22 year old. I honestly didn't know any of the reasons why it couldn't work!
- mohidzahid 2y agoso proud of you
- leuren 2y agoCongrats! I did a lot of work with VWO back in 2017 and 2018. Great platform, and deserved.
- santiagobasulto 2y agoCongratulations Paras! What are your plans next? Do you have to stay, new venture or just chill and enjoy?
- rajnathani 2y agoCongratulations Paras! Given that I know you IRL, it's so nice to see your post here! JFYI for those who have seen similar posts on HN earlier, one of them (2020) from earlier was from Paras when his company got pretty successful already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470
- hzxs1990225 2y agocongratulations
- tincholio 2y agoCongrats man! Just as a side note, "paras" means best, in Finnish, so that'd make you the Best Chopra!
- illegalmemory 2y ago"Paras" in Sanskrit means "someone who, by their touch, turns anything into gold."
- davorb 2y agoIt's also Persian for "money"
- MarcelOlsz 2y agoExtremely strong nominative determinism at play here across multiple languages.
- paraschopra 2y agoThis is awesome, thanks!
- santa_boy 2y agoWow! Congrats!
- adhambadr 2y agowhat a sweet message. Congratulations!
- ice45571 2y agoCongrats~~
- ExxKA 2y agoCongratulations Paras! Awesome to hear a story like this and impressive that you managed to build such a strong company in such a short time.
- alekhshah 2y agoGreat VWO, Kudos to the founders!
- seba_dos1 2y agoMust be sad to have to let things you built go, especially knowing how often selling them starts a downward spiral leading to their demise.
- paraschopra 2y agoActually, no. I feel inspired and excited about life and what experiments this money can help me do (which otherwise wouldn't get funded).
- lohithjavali 2y agoCongratulations @paraschipra
- varunthumukunta 2y agoCongrats Paras!
- igleria 2y agoEnjoy your early retirement (that is what I would do in your case, spending the rest of my life enjoying things now that money is not a problem)
- ricenb 2y agowhat an impressive story, please accept my praise!
- indus 2y ago@paras: Congrats! If you remember we met in Palo Alto when you were thinking about moving to the Bay Area -- I spilled my tea which soiled your t-shirt :-) This is a fantastic outcome. Why not keep going?
- paraschopra 2y agoYes, sir I do remember :) Why not keep going? Well, everything comes to an end eventually. Projects are kind of like that - they start and they end.
- indus 2y agoAmazing! Good luck with whatever you are planning to do next. Hmu, if you are in the Bay Area next.
- cmenge 2y agoImpressive, congrats!
- Kostchei 2y ago16 years+ for $200mn minus costs. Still pretty good, grats :)
- dockerd 2y agoCongrats @paraschopra ! This is an incredibly inspiring story for many of us. A couple of questions: 1. What would be your one piece of advice for someone looking to bootstrap a company? 2. How can one identify B2B problems worth solving? And how do you go about acquiring and selling to those customers? 3. If you were starting today, which domain would you choose?
- paraschopra 2y ago>What would be your one piece of advice for someone looking to bootstrap a company? Hire only when your revenue exceeds costs. Might be hard but this instills the discipline of always operating at a profit. >How can one identify B2B problems worth solving? And how do you go about acquiring and selling to those customers? Look for inefficiencies in workflows. If you save companies time or effort in a big way, they will pay up. To acquire customers, you need to super-precise emails (I never did outbound but I'm unsure my style of content marketing will fly today) >If you were starting today, which domain would you choose? The one you feel most passionate about. But remain open to significant pivots. First idea never works, but it is essential to choose something you can really get into.
- rkowal 2y agoHuge, huge respect and Congrats!! Enjoy it and continue doing great work!
- kopirgan 2y agoCongrats! This is really inspiring considering its based on internal accrual without external funding.
- guhcampos 2y agoI'm so so sorry for all your employees right now.
- paraschopra 2y agowhy?
- ellis0n 2y agoCongratulations! You’re the best! It would be a great tradition to donate to a random startup after each exit. Why isn’t this part of startup culture? Any PG-like article about that?
- Benjamin_Dobell 2y agoIt's common for founders who have exited to become angel investors. Donating to a startup probably doesn't make a heap of sense though.
- paraschopra 2y agoI along with my wife have been running Escape Velocity grants where we give no-conditions grant to young people under 25 who show promise. https://invertedpassion.com/escape-velocity-grant/ https://invertedpassion.com/escape-velocity-grant/ Plan to accelerate it.
- Dinux 2y agoCongrats! Do you have any idea what to do next?
- m11c 2y agoCongratulations! Well done.
- Pete-Codes 2y agoThat's a fookin crazy exit! Always like seeing these stories. Will mention it in my High Signal newsletter.
- giorgioz 2y agoCongrats!! Ahrefs says you reached 3.4mln backlinks and 18k linking websites: https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker/?input=https%3A%2F%2Fvwo.com%2Fen https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker/?input=https%3A... How did you achive such incredible numbers? I noticed you localized the landing pages to English/Spanish/German/Portuguese. I did that too when founding polyblog.io and multilocale.com but never got results incredible as yours. I noticed you use Yoast SEO, the sitemap.xml is not localized and you also didn't add localized meta tags. I suspect those localization "best practises" in reality matter very little compared to the sheer incredible amount of backlinks you got...
- paraschopra 2y agoI love writing, perhaps that's the trick?
- igauravsehrawat 2y agoYou deserved it Paras!! Have distinct memories when you hired people from my College, to organizing hackathons, to your slack group and your newsletter had been inspirational. Say hi to Varun from my side.
- Ayushism 2y agoProved again, you can just do things.
- ychn114 2y ago[dead]
- memhole 2y agoCongrats! You all have done excellent work. As much as my tastes towards user experiments has changed, I've read your papers and you all really put forth a good product. I've been publishing my work that never got PMF. Maybe it'll give you some inspiration for a later endeavor. You were one of my "competitors". https://blog.graphicalmethods.com/ai-persona-media-testing-are-you-mee.html https://blog.graphicalmethods.com/ai-persona-media-testing-a...
- paraschopra 2y agoThank you!
- brentm 2y agoNice win, Congrats!
- sebastianvoelkl 2y agoCongrats
- auston 2y agoLets gooooooo!! Congrats man!
- oniony 2y agoCurious as to whether you had people hounding you for money after posting this.
- brianwawok 2y ago15 years is such a long time. I understand why bootstrapped path takes longer than the VC path, I wonder if there are stats on average time from start till sale both bootstrapped vs VC. (On like year 8 of bootstrapped here).
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- barunbuilds 2y agoCongratulations! VWO was my GrowthX assignment so I’ve always followed your story - super inspirational!
- srinathkrishna 2y agoCongrats and inspiring to hear your journey! :)
- jarek83 2y agoI must say I always hated your tool for how it hijacks page rendering. I took long battles with our marketing team, as we fought for every single millisecond of loading times, and VWO introduction just thrown this all into the bin. And I wanted to put up a negative review on gartner but they never let it through - I guess it was because of the $25 USD gift card campaign, so the paid campaign would not backfire the product. Which of course made me hate your tool even more. But that aside, I'm really glad (envy?) that the tool was successful for you!
- paraschopra 2y agoSorry about that! We now have server side testing option where A/B tests trigger from the backend.
- filipealva 2y agoCongrats!
- shreezus 2y agoWell-deserved. Congratulations on the exit, and looking forward to seeing what you build next!
- Anisa_Mirza 2y agoParas - this friggin awesome! As a 2x yc founder, who has chewed her share of glass trying to make something(s) people want, your bootstrapped story is inspiration for so many of us fellow founders. Congrats!
- paraschopra 2y agoThank you!
- imsurajkadam 2y agoFollowing you since very long, your journey is so inspiring!
- ADAMOsong 2y ago[dead]