7 ms·

Bootstrapped Wingify moves to a bigger office and hits 1600+ customers

104 points by paraschopra 14y ago

famoreira 14y ago
Congratulations @paraschopra. Really great to the success of your company/products.
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Thanks man. We're very excited about building a great software company and staying bootstrapped as long as we can :)
thlt 14y ago
congrat Sparsh -- from Trung
- sparshgupta 14y ago
  Thanks Trung, good to see you on HN :)
nreece 14y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again (because Paras and his team deserve it): I tell people about VWO as the prime (and possibly, the only) example of an Indian startup with a truly global product. Edit: Sorry, forgot Zoho.
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Kayako, FusionCharts, BrowserStack, FreshDesk are other great Indian software companies that I admire. (The first 3 are bootstrapped too, as far as I know).
njx 14y ago
congratulations Paras. Great bootstrapping!
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Thanks :)
jameszol 14y ago
I am a raving fan of VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com (VWO) and highly recommend using or trying their A/B product over any other. Paras truly cares about his product, responds personally to inquiries although I am sure that as the business grows he may not be able to do that as much. It was clear to me from day 1 as an early customer (1st test deployed Sept 2010) that he truly cares about his customer, listens to his customer, and works insanely hard for his customer as does his entire team; and you can not put a price tag on that, in my opinion. Now go subscribe to VWO and take his team to 2000+ customers! It will be beyond worthwhile for your website and business. It has been for mine. Thank you for building a phenomenal product @paraschopra and team!
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Thanks James! I remember you being one of the earliest customers of VWO. With expanded team, we're baking lots and lots of interesting new features. But I will make sure the customer experience remains #1 priority even as we grow :)
  - kalid 14y ago
    I'd like to chime in as well: VWO is awesome, and Paras' support rocks.
netcan 14y ago
As a user, I pretty much have to chime in here & say this is well deserved success. It's a great product & pretty much the best customer support I've ever encountered. Every time I've needed it, I was in contact (email & skype) with Someone Who Knows and not afraid of treading into the gray area between your problem & their problem.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
brianbreslin 14y ago
excellent. with 1600+ paying customers that means they are clearing over $1M in revenue/year. ($49 being cheapest plan * 1600 = 80k/month)
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Our enterprise customers pay thousands of dollars per month, so it is well over $1M :)
  - dmix 14y ago
    Thats awesome. I remember when you launched on HN not long ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141
    - paraschopra 14y ago
      Yep, that was for the original prototype called Wingify (which I had to completely discard. Horrible user experience). Based on feedback from initial users of the prototype, then I had built Visual Website Optimizer and had launched on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=991252 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=991252
      - Juuumanji 14y ago
        congrats on the excellent progress!
- terat 14y ago
  Considering the listed plans alone are $49, $129, $249, $729, $900, $1,700 I'm willing to bet annual revenue is many, many, MANY multiples higher than $1 million. And that's not taking into account all the custom enterprise plans on the very high end. Really inspirational and motivational stuff for us entrepreneurs just starting with out SaaS apps to see this - and it's all done without giving away a chunk of ownership. Thanks and good luck, Paras.
bdunn 14y ago
I've been using Optimizely, but after hearing from about VWO from COUNTLESS people I think I'm going to make the switch. Plus, bootstrappers should support other bootstrappers, eh?
- petercooper 14y ago
  I'd be keen to hear the difference from someone who has used both in anger. I'm with VWO (because it gets mentioned around here so much - so I went there first) and it's awesome but it's always good to keep your options open.
  - dsiroker 14y ago
    Congrats, Paras! As for a comparison, Optimizely uses Akamai which has 100,000 nodes in 75 countries. VWO uses Cloudfront and does two round-trips. Cloudfront has 32 points of presence in 12 countries. Optimizely response time: Slowest: 289ms, Average: 65ms, Slowest: 19ms VWO response time: Slowest 1983ms, Average: 276ms, 171ms Source: http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/100-Shopping-for-a-CDN.html http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/100-Shopping-for-a-... Unique features to Optimizely that VWO does not have: - Mobile web support & editor - Dynamic text insertion - Staging server support - Human-readable results - Documented API - Advanced developer tools - Cross-browser testing for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, iOS, and Android - One-click integrations with Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, KISSmetrics, MixPanel - Implementation is 1-line of code vs 21 lines of code - Pricing starts at $19/mon vs $49/mon - Optimizely comes with a 100% money back satisfaction guarantee with 99.999% service level agreement - Optimizely support offers web, phone, email, and a dedicated account manager, as well as the CEO's direct cell for Platinum customers In terms of adoption by the top 10,000 websites on the internet Optimizely is 6x bigger than VWO. Sources: http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Visual-Website-Optimizer http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Visual-Website-Optimiz... Note: I co-founded Optimizely and used Google Website Optimizer, Omniture Test&Target, and VWO but by no means an expert in their products.
    - 14y ago
unlimit 14y ago
Congrats, Some questions :-) Are you incorporated in US? If not what do you use for payments?
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Nope, we're an India based company. We use 2checkout for payments.
plinkplonk 14y ago
Paras's (founder of Wingify) blog posts on Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-g... How to find startup ideas that make money http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-startup-ideas-that-make-money.htm http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-sta... might be appropriate given his stunning success (congrats Paras) The other great thing about Wingify is that they aimed from the beginning at a global product vs a 'localized' knock off of an existing American product.
- kroger 14y ago
  The link for "Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money" is: http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-g...
  - plinkplonk 14y ago
    fixed. thanks. sorry about that. too much time without sleep.
desinerd 14y ago
good stuff!
jeremyjh 14y ago
It seems so many successful small internet businesses lately are attacking meta-problems for the benefit of small internet businesses. Sort of like Levi selling bluejeans to gold miners in California.
Hovertruck 14y ago
I like the VWO guys. I was kind of an ass and ranted about some issues in their JS on twitter recently and they reached out to me and addressed the issues I was encountering. Very responsive, look forward to seeing what they can come up with.
santa_boy 14y ago
Hey Paras, What was your methodology for customer development, customer acquisition in the early days of your startup? Or, did you build for yourself? What are the distribution channels you currently use?
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Main methodology was guest blogging. I contributed exhaustive articles in publications such as Smashing Magazine, CopyBlogger, etc. The articles were purely educational in nature, taught people what A/B testing was and VWO was introduced as one of the of the new tools to do A/B testing easily. The second big focus was on passion for feedback from early customers and incorporating that into the product. Really, our product is driven mostly by customer feedback and that is why our customers love talking about it. I plan to write comprehensively about it. But I do keep posting my experiences on my blog http://paraschopra.com/blog/ http://paraschopra.com/blog/
Xcelerate 14y ago
There's something about bootstrapped companies that I really like. I've always thought if I began a start-up, it would be without any venture capital.
ericclemmons 14y ago
As a long time user of VWO, I'm very impressed and pleased with their success. Early on, perhaps about 2 years ago, I reached out to Paras asking for an API so our internal dashboard could show the status and performance of all running tests. Within a few days, there was a private (or non-published) API ready to go. Since then, my business and I have been using it daily. Disclaimer: I even supplied a testimonial for their homepage after frustrating experiences with Google and Omniture. :)

104 points by paraschopra 14y ago

famoreira 14y ago

Congratulations @paraschopra. Really great to the success of your company/products.

paraschopra 14y ago
Thanks man. We're very excited about building a great software company and staying bootstrapped as long as we can :)

thlt 14y ago

congrat Sparsh -- from Trung

sparshgupta 14y ago
Thanks Trung, good to see you on HN :)

nreece 14y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again (because Paras and his team deserve it): I tell people about VWO as the prime (and possibly, the only) example of an Indian startup with a truly global product. Edit: Sorry, forgot Zoho.

paraschopra 14y ago
Kayako, FusionCharts, BrowserStack, FreshDesk are other great Indian software companies that I admire. (The first 3 are bootstrapped too, as far as I know).

njx 14y ago

congratulations Paras. Great bootstrapping!

paraschopra 14y ago
Thanks :)

jameszol 14y ago

I am a raving fan of VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com (VWO) and highly recommend using or trying their A/B product over any other. Paras truly cares about his product, responds personally to inquiries although I am sure that as the business grows he may not be able to do that as much. It was clear to me from day 1 as an early customer (1st test deployed Sept 2010) that he truly cares about his customer, listens to his customer, and works insanely hard for his customer as does his entire team; and you can not put a price tag on that, in my opinion. Now go subscribe to VWO and take his team to 2000+ customers! It will be beyond worthwhile for your website and business. It has been for mine. Thank you for building a phenomenal product @paraschopra and team!

paraschopra 14y ago
Thanks James! I remember you being one of the earliest customers of VWO. With expanded team, we're baking lots and lots of interesting new features. But I will make sure the customer experience remains #1 priority even as we grow :)
- kalid 14y ago
  I'd like to chime in as well: VWO is awesome, and Paras' support rocks.

netcan 14y ago

As a user, I pretty much have to chime in here & say this is well deserved success. It's a great product & pretty much the best customer support I've ever encountered. Every time I've needed it, I was in contact (email & skype) with Someone Who Knows and not afraid of treading into the gray area between your problem & their problem.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

brianbreslin 14y ago

excellent. with 1600+ paying customers that means they are clearing over $1M in revenue/year. ($49 being cheapest plan * 1600 = 80k/month)

paraschopra 14y ago
Our enterprise customers pay thousands of dollars per month, so it is well over $1M :)
- dmix 14y ago
  Thats awesome. I remember when you launched on HN not long ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141
  - paraschopra 14y ago
    Yep, that was for the original prototype called Wingify (which I had to completely discard. Horrible user experience). Based on feedback from initial users of the prototype, then I had built Visual Website Optimizer and had launched on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=991252 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=991252
    - Juuumanji 14y ago
      congrats on the excellent progress!
terat 14y ago
Considering the listed plans alone are $49, $129, $249, $729, $900, $1,700 I'm willing to bet annual revenue is many, many, MANY multiples higher than $1 million. And that's not taking into account all the custom enterprise plans on the very high end. Really inspirational and motivational stuff for us entrepreneurs just starting with out SaaS apps to see this - and it's all done without giving away a chunk of ownership. Thanks and good luck, Paras.

bdunn 14y ago

I've been using Optimizely, but after hearing from about VWO from COUNTLESS people I think I'm going to make the switch. Plus, bootstrappers should support other bootstrappers, eh?

petercooper 14y ago
I'd be keen to hear the difference from someone who has used both in anger. I'm with VWO (because it gets mentioned around here so much - so I went there first) and it's awesome but it's always good to keep your options open.
- dsiroker 14y ago
  Congrats, Paras! As for a comparison, Optimizely uses Akamai which has 100,000 nodes in 75 countries. VWO uses Cloudfront and does two round-trips. Cloudfront has 32 points of presence in 12 countries. Optimizely response time: Slowest: 289ms, Average: 65ms, Slowest: 19ms VWO response time: Slowest 1983ms, Average: 276ms, 171ms Source: http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/100-Shopping-for-a-CDN.html http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/100-Shopping-for-a-... Unique features to Optimizely that VWO does not have: - Mobile web support & editor - Dynamic text insertion - Staging server support - Human-readable results - Documented API - Advanced developer tools - Cross-browser testing for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, iOS, and Android - One-click integrations with Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, KISSmetrics, MixPanel - Implementation is 1-line of code vs 21 lines of code - Pricing starts at $19/mon vs $49/mon - Optimizely comes with a 100% money back satisfaction guarantee with 99.999% service level agreement - Optimizely support offers web, phone, email, and a dedicated account manager, as well as the CEO's direct cell for Platinum customers In terms of adoption by the top 10,000 websites on the internet Optimizely is 6x bigger than VWO. Sources: http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Visual-Website-Optimizer http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Visual-Website-Optimiz... Note: I co-founded Optimizely and used Google Website Optimizer, Omniture Test&Target, and VWO but by no means an expert in their products.
  - 14y ago

unlimit 14y ago

Congrats, Some questions :-) Are you incorporated in US? If not what do you use for payments?

paraschopra 14y ago
Nope, we're an India based company. We use 2checkout for payments.

plinkplonk 14y ago

Paras's (founder of Wingify) blog posts on Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-g... How to find startup ideas that make money http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-startup-ideas-that-make-money.htm http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-sta... might be appropriate given his stunning success (congrats Paras) The other great thing about Wingify is that they aimed from the beginning at a global product vs a 'localized' knock off of an existing American product.

kroger 14y ago
The link for "Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money" is: http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-g...
- plinkplonk 14y ago
  fixed. thanks. sorry about that. too much time without sleep.

desinerd 14y ago

good stuff!

jeremyjh 14y ago

It seems so many successful small internet businesses lately are attacking meta-problems for the benefit of small internet businesses. Sort of like Levi selling bluejeans to gold miners in California.

Hovertruck 14y ago

I like the VWO guys. I was kind of an ass and ranted about some issues in their JS on twitter recently and they reached out to me and addressed the issues I was encountering. Very responsive, look forward to seeing what they can come up with.

santa_boy 14y ago

Hey Paras, What was your methodology for customer development, customer acquisition in the early days of your startup? Or, did you build for yourself? What are the distribution channels you currently use?

paraschopra 14y ago
Main methodology was guest blogging. I contributed exhaustive articles in publications such as Smashing Magazine, CopyBlogger, etc. The articles were purely educational in nature, taught people what A/B testing was and VWO was introduced as one of the of the new tools to do A/B testing easily. The second big focus was on passion for feedback from early customers and incorporating that into the product. Really, our product is driven mostly by customer feedback and that is why our customers love talking about it. I plan to write comprehensively about it. But I do keep posting my experiences on my blog http://paraschopra.com/blog/ http://paraschopra.com/blog/

Xcelerate 14y ago

There's something about bootstrapped companies that I really like. I've always thought if I began a start-up, it would be without any venture capital.

ericclemmons 14y ago

As a long time user of VWO, I'm very impressed and pleased with their success. Early on, perhaps about 2 years ago, I reached out to Paras asking for an API so our internal dashboard could show the status and performance of all running tests. Within a few days, there was a private (or non-published) API ready to go. Since then, my business and I have been using it daily. Disclaimer: I even supplied a testimonial for their homepage after frustrating experiences with Google and Omniture. :)