Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Vacasa to $100 Million

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.

When we spoke in 2015, Cliff Johnson and his co-founder had bootstrapped Vacasa to scale in the crowded vacation rental space. Vacasa was acquired by Oasis Collections in 2018 and became a publicly traded company in 2021.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Cliff Johnson: I actually have a fairly unique background, at least for the US anyway. I was born in New Jersey. I’ve lived there until about I was 12 and then moved to a small farm town in Missouri where we had an 80-acre farm. I learned a lot of different skills out there. That was my initial upbringing. My dad is a welder pipefitter.

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Meta’s Investment Outlook Keeps Growing

Meta (Nasdaq: META), formerly Facebook, announced its quarterly results last week that outpaced market expectations. But Meta’s plans to continue to increase capex spending during the year, caused its stock to fall 3% in the after-hours trading session.

Bootstrapping to Exit, Then Raise Money and Exit Again: Wendy CEO Lance Neuhauser (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So then in this story, at what point did you raise the venture capital? Is this 2010?

Lance Newhauser: Yes, 2010.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do before going out to raise money? Did you do some amount of customer development, validation work? Whom were you selling to? What was the positioning?

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Bootstrapping to Exit, Then Raise Money and Exit Again: Wendy CEO Lance Neuhauser (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: From your personal career journey point of view, I have gone through a similar journey. After I did three startups as Founder CEO, I started consulting because I just wanted to do something else and learn a different skill. I didn’t want to be a CEO, I wanted to learn something else. I then did turnaround consulting, and I learned a ton.

Bootstrapping to Exit, Then Raise Money and Exit Again: Wendy CEO Lance Neuhauser (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The track that we have is bootstrapping using services, which your story also speaks to. Services companies bring in revenues very early and that helps a lot. So bootstrapping using services to exit is a wonderful track actually.

Colors: Wilderness II

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Wilderness II

Wilderness II | Sramana Mitra, 2022 | Watercolor, Ink | 9  x 12, On Paper

Bootstrapping to Exit, Then Raise Money and Exit Again: Wendy CEO Lance Neuhauser (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I assume that since it was a services company, you were able to bootstrap it, right?

Lance Newhauser: Yes, it was a service company that we initially bootstrapped. We did bring on one investor who put a few thousand dollars into the company so that we could go get some office space and work in the same area. But this was very much a bootstrapped, service-oriented organization. Over time, we incorporated technology to offer differentiated services and improve operational efficiency, enabling us to stay price-competitive.  But we’re very much a bootstrapped service business, no doubt.

Sramana Mitra: Now, how did this company that spent $50 million on a campaign find you?