Bootstrapping to $10 Million: Lawline CEO David Schnurman ( Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How many people are there now?

David Schnurman: About 25 or so. We have partners, but we try to keep everything that is core to ourselves and then outsource everything else. We have many agencies that we work with from a marketing standpoint to manage AdWords and rebranding.

We also have a partner who manages our customer experience. If you look to see all the people that we have, it’s probably close to 40 with all the outsourcing partners. I have no problems growing because we have to.

Ever since COVID, we are a completely remote company. It’s a huge transition and it’s going to be the best thing happening for the company. 

Sramana Mitra: Where are these 25 people that work for the company? Are they all in New York? You are in Barcelona now. What’s the configuration of the company?

David Schnurman: It’s pretty much the northeast. 

Sramana Mitra: Even though you are recognizing the value of remote, the company is still in one geography?

David Schnurman: This was only six months ago. Now, we are starting to hire not limited to that area. 

Sramana Mitra: We have a lot of virtual company case studies. We have built One Million by One Million as a virtual company. I have people all over the world. 

David Schnurman: I would love to learn more from that. My sister, Michelle, and I would love to see some of those case studies. We think we are doing a lot of things right by trying to follow examples, but we have a lot to learn. 

Sramana Mitra: Look at the entrepreneur journey series on our blog and search virtual companies or teams. I’ve been seeing this trend long before COVID and then in COVID, it’s accelerated tremendously.

The whole Upwork thing for us was great. We’ve had people that we’ve hired from Upwork, and they have been working for us for 10 years. It obviously works. You can get great people at unbelievable cost structures in the Philippines and India. 

David Schnurman: I can tell you that it’s even deeper for me. All of that is true. The biggest thing that is so empowering for the world and as the owner or the CEO of the business is that it allows people to live their lives first and be present in their lives more than they used to be.

One of our employees has lost 35 lbs since she has been home because she can get up in the morning and work out and not have to commute. She just feels great and it’s great to see that. 

Sramana Mitra: We have case studies of entrepreneurs who have built substantial virtual companies while living in different places. They have this wanderlust and they love to live in different places and travel, but they can run their company from anywhere. We’ve looked at this trend from different lenses. 

David Schnurman: I might need you to be my new mentor. 

Sramana Mitra: You started to talk about this topic a little bit and I want to go a bit further. Early in my career, I did three startups as a founder and CEO and I lived the life of a venture-funded entrepreneur and even this company could have been done as a venture-funded company.

I was offered it at the beginning and I didn’t do it because I didn’t think that this was going to scale fast. I also didn’t want the pressure of needing to scale fast without figuring out if it will scale fast because I was committed to the mission and vision of this company.

I know from being in Silicon Valley for 25 years that there is a tremendous bias against what they call lifestyle business. I’m a huge believer and fan of the lifestyle business.

If you look at the pandemic of burnout, stress, divorce, and dysfunctional families, it’s something that people don’t do a great job of managing when they are in this hyper treadmill mode going from zero to $100 million in five to seven years.

It sounds like you bootstrapped your startup, right?

David Schnurman: Yes, there’s no funding. 

Sramana Mitra: What is your thinking around all of that?

David Schnurman: Exactly the same thinking as yours. Even to this day, I don’t trust the whole process of doing that. It’s the adage, “You are never going to get what you think you are worth.” The market is not going to be a billion-dollar company. I didn’t know how to go about that.

All I knew was how to get customers. I don’t know how to raise money and everybody I talked to who did said, “If you can make money, don’t even waste your time.” I just put my head down and we’ve been profitable every year. 

Sramana Mitra: You don’t have a choice. If you bootstrapped your company, then you have to be profitable every year. 

David Schnurman: Luckily, the lease for our office is up in April. We have a beautiful 8,000 sq ft office with a state-of-the-art TV studio that we built for our programs. We are going to be saving half a million dollars every year or so on rent. We are going to put some of that into other costs like supporting employees and building culture in a post-COVID world where we can see each other again. 

Sramana Mitra: I always knew that I didn’t want that overhead cost.

This segment is a part in the series : Bootstrapping to $10 Million