Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 3)

Jonny Grubin: I wrote to a couple of friends and we launched an MVP. People couldn’t do anything with SoPost, but it allowed me to test the concept. In December 2012, we launched a website where you could sign up with your email address. You could add some delivery addresses and create a schedule, but you couldn’t do anything off the back of it.

Sramana Mitra: You said you worked with a couple of friends. You also had this paycheck that was still going when you started this company. Can you take me to that very beginning before you launched an MVP when you decided to restart? How long did you keep that other job?

Jonny Grubin: The first few months of it, I was trying to figure it out and understand what I wanted. All in all, it was probably six and eight months. I understand the technical side of things, but I’m not a programmer. I can’t code. I also didn’t have the ability to pay commercial rates to build something for me.

I had somebody who was prepared to put in a small amount of investment to get me going. I was very nervous about taking external funding. I wanted to prove something out first. I didn’t want somebody to invest and have their money disappear. It was important to me that I had some skin in the game. It was really bootstrapped. Having my small salary from the other company helped.

Sramana Mitra: But you were a solo entrepreneur bootstrapping with a paycheck?

Jonny Grubin: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: We have tons of solo entrepreneurs building companies. We have tons of bootstrapping with a paycheck entrepreneurs. In fact, bootstrapping with a paycheck is a massive trend right now.

Jonny Grubin: I think it’s a good way to do things. I meet a lot of people who are thinking about starting something. They think they need to change everything in order to do it. I tell them you don’t. In my mind, there is no point in taking that huge risk until you’ve at least demonstrated that you have something there.

Sramana Mitra: Who built your MVP?

Jonny Grubin: It was a very good friend of mine. He’s an incredible human being. He likes to build stuff. We’ve probably known each other for 12 years now. In that time, I’ve seen him build agencies, cool tech products, and co-working spaces.

Sramana Mitra: By the time you quit your job, was the MVP done?

Jonny Grubin: Yes. We launched the MVP in December 2012. It was very basic. It answered the questions that I wanted to answer. Is there demand for this? What happened from there was that I raised a little bit of investment.

Sramana Mitra: Was the one you were working who put in the money?

Jonny Grubin: It was somebody else. It was someone I had met a few years earlier and who believed in me.

Sramana Mitra: Friends and family investments happen in people. They’re not investors in businesses; they’ve investors in people.

Jonny Grubin: Exactly. I’m grateful for that as well. I’ve always been quite focused on who we do and do not raise investment from.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin
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