Mar 9, 2021 · 1h 3m · startups-for-the-rest-of-us
Episode 539 | Post-Exit Life, Writing Six Books, and Brewing Beer with Dan Norris
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of Startups for the Rest of Us, Rob Walling interviews entrepreneur and author Dan Norris about the founding of WP Curve, scaling Black Hops Brewing with compound marketing, and the psychological realities of startup exits.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Rob holds 45.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Rob as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 2.2 Guest disagreement 2.3 Rob pushing back 2.3
speaking balance: gold is Rob, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 54:05 Selling is a failure framing
Dan forcefully rejects the conventional narrative of celebrating startup acquisitions, calling founders' justifications BS and framing selling out to major corporations as an admission of failure.
Hardest push from Rob ▶ 55:07 Rob rejects the failure premiseRob immediately and firmly rejects Dan's framing that selling a company is a failure, stating clearly that they do not see eye-to-eye on that premise.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 37:25 Challenging the value of moderate exitsDan directly calls out Rob on his repeated claim that a quarter million dollars changes lives, pointing out that moderate windfalls do not fundamentally alter daily living or solve identity crises post-exit.
Rob holds their own ▶ 1:00:20 Granular SaaS valuation breakdownRob demonstrates commanding expertise by laying out exact net profit percentages, valuation multiples, and the temporal trade-offs between holding a SaaS business for 15 years versus selling.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Rob as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Rob pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reconnecting and Dan's Approach to Writing Six Books | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Rob and Dan catch up cordially about writing books and podcasting streaks. The tone is entirely friendly with mutual respect and self-deprecating humor about authoring multiple books. | |
| The Origins and GoDaddy Acquisition of WP Curve | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Dan recounts the origin of WP Curve's productized service model and its sale to GoDaddy. Rob shares his own post-exit reflections and investment approaches while validating Dan's revenue multiple strategy. | |
| Applying Compound Marketing Principles to Black Hops Brewing | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Rob discusses pairing direct response marketing with brand building, while Dan gently pushes back by emphasizing that organic storytelling and zero ad spend worked far better for Black Hops. Rob incorporates data points from TinySeed portfolio companies. | |
| Post-Exit Psychological Adjustments and the Arrival Fallacy | 6 | 3 | 4 | 3 | Dan directly challenges Rob's assertion that $250k is life-changing money and questions the psychology of setting arbitrary revenue goals. Rob pushes back by explaining the arrival fallacy and his working-class perspective on financial security. | |
| Reflections on Selling Drip and Overcoming Startup Stress | 6 | 2 | 4 | 4 | Dan turns the tables on Rob, grilling him on whether selling Drip was leaving immense upside on the table and arguing that selling a startup can be viewed as a failure. Rob holds his ground, clearly articulating his desire not to manage a massive organization. | |
| The Viability of Bootstrapping and Running SaaS Long-Term | 8 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Rob showcases deep domain authority by citing MicroConf State of Independent SaaS survey statistics and breaking down the granular financial math of running a $2M ARR business versus selling for an 8-figure multiple. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Norris: Podcasts drive deeper in-person engagement than larger content channels
“I find that when we go to like beer events in person, people are always talking about the podcast, even though out of all the content we do, it's got by far the smallest audience.”
Norris: Non-developers shouldn't start software businesses
“I'm also not a developer. So I just think it's
It's just not a good idea to start a software business if you're not a developer.”
Walling invested 2% to 3% of his net worth in crypto post-exit
“When I sold drip, I was like, have some money to play around with. Like, I don't buy individual stocks. I tend to be, I buy assets, you know, I buy like index funds and stuff. I'm going to throw like two percent, maybe three percent of our net worth into crypt…”
GoDaddy acquired $1M/year WP Curve on a revenue multiple, not profit
“We were turning over about a million dollars a year. Founders were earning about a 150 K each and that, you know, there wasn't much left. You know, if I had sold an agency like that, I'd be lucky to sell it for a small profit multiple. And I always thought if …”
Norris: Black Hops Brewing has 600 equity crowdfunding investors
“Like, because we've done the equity crowdfunding, we've also got 600 investors.”
Walling: Hitting seven-figure revenue requires building a brand and community
“I think it's very, very hard to build something into the seven figure run rate without some type of brand and community.”
Black Hops spends near zero on marketing despite 11% industry average
“On average, companies are spending about 11% of their top level turnover on, on marketing. And for us, that's over a million dollars a year, well over a million dollars a year, and we're spending almost zero.”
Norris: A $1M to $3M exit doesn't massively change a founder's life
“I don't think a quarter million dollars is really going to change your life, depending on who you are. But, you know, if it's a million dollars or two million dollars, three million dollars, I don't really believe that's going to massively change your life.”
Norris: Black Hops Brewing surpassed $10M in annual revenue
“Like our business last year turned over over ten million dollars.”
Founders are happier when they stop expecting post-exit euphoria
“Yeah, and I guess happier in between if you know that you're not going to get this big burst of happiness at a certain point.”
Black Hops doubled revenue yearly for six years, reaching profitability
“In the 12 months of 2020, we grew by 100%, which we'd done every year the previous six years. So we maintained our really high growth, which is tough with the physical products business. We became profitable and very comfortably profitable.”
Norris: Selling an independent brewery to a conglomerate is a cop-out
“What almost always happens is they end up selling to them, and then at the end of that say, oh, you know, it's been a good run, you know, this company's the right fit for us, and all of this kind of s***. It's like, well, that's bulls***. You're selling to the…”
Walling regrets not raising a $300k to $500k angel round for Drip
“I think we were a little undercapitalized, like I would have, I should have raised an angel round, I would not have raised venture capital, I have no desire to go on that treadmill, but I probably could have raised 300 to 500 grand pretty early on, and at a go…”
Walling: Mature SaaS companies can achieve 30% to 50% net margins
“Growth is expensive and growth, the faster you grow, usually the less profitable you are. But once you start to slow that growth down, that's when a SaaS company, even at scale with It's a 20, 50, a hundred employees can throw off 30 to 50% net profit, right? …”
MicroConf survey: 87% of independent SaaS companies raised no outside funding
“I mean, we do a state of independent SaaS survey through MicroConf, and we just put the report out, and of all the people in that survey running SaaS companies with revenue, I believe it was like 12, 13% had raised some type of funding, so the other 87, you kn…”