Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: So this brings us to what? Fall of 2021?

Chris Sinkinson: Yes. Right after all that back to school stuff, Dave and I were completely exhausted and one of our biggest competitors out of the Boston area reached out to us. They had been noticing that we’d been winning some deals and we were starting to step on their toes a little bit.

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Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Now, between when you started with your first client and as you went along, how long did it take you to get to $1 million ARR?

Chris Sinkinson: As I’d mentioned, we charged a one time setup fee at the beginning. That hurt us a little bit. I would say it was around late 2015-2016 when we hit that $1 million ARR. The first million is the toughest.

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Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Double click down on pricing. Now that you are getting these inbound leads and it sounds like you are not having too much difficulty closing the accounts, what’s the pricing?

Chris Sinkinson: We did start increasing pricing, but we were doing it wrong. We were charging an upfront setup fee and then a very small recurring fee for maintenance.

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Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What is the timeline for when all this is happening? When did you start developing? When did you get it out there? When did you get this endorsement and this opportunity to be celebrated in front of all these universities? What is the timeline of when all this is happening?