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May 21, 2018 · 16m · top-founders

1031 How VWO Bootstrapped to $15m+

Nathan Latka · 7m spoken Paras Chopra · 6m spoken
0:00 / 0:00

gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

In this episode of The Top Entrepreneurs, host Nathan Latka interviews Wingify founder Paras Chopra, exploring how he bootstrapped conversion optimization platform VWO to $18 million in annual recurring revenue with a 200-person team and a 2.5-month customer acquisition payback period.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 53.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Nathan as informed peer 5.0 Guest teaching 1.8 Guest disagreement 2.8 Nathan pushing back 5.0
05100:0010:000:49–3:00 · Nathan as informed peer 2/10 Introducing Founder Paras Chopra and Wingify Latka introduces Paras Chopra and covers foundational company basics like founding dates, bootstrapping status, and team size. The exchange is highly collaborative and informational with zero tension.3:00–8:29 · Nathan as informed peer 7/10 VWO Product Capabilities and Mid-Market Optimization When Chopra hesitates to reveal his churn numbers, Latka aggressively pushes back and lectures him on SaaS metrics, explicitly distinguishing logo churn from revenue churn. Chopra defends his market by explaining how lack of dedicated tooling ownership drives mid-market churn.8:32–12:50 · Nathan as informed peer 6/10 Sponsor Message: Website Analytics with Hotjar Latka presses Chopra hard on his vague growth metrics, challenging his reluctance to share figures and directly questioning whether the business is actually flat. Chopra pushes back by refusing to give precise percentages while maintaining they are expanding product lines.12:50–15:40 · Nathan as informed peer 5/10 Customer Acquisition Cost, Payback Periods, and Operations Latka calculates the payback period and CAC live on the spot from Chopra's fractional estimates, pressing him to verify if the math holds true before wrapping up smoothly with the Famous Five.0:49–3:00 · Guest teaching 1/10 Introducing Founder Paras Chopra and Wingify Latka introduces Paras Chopra and covers foundational company basics like founding dates, bootstrapping status, and team size. The exchange is highly collaborative and informational with zero tension.3:00–8:29 · Guest teaching 3/10 VWO Product Capabilities and Mid-Market Optimization When Chopra hesitates to reveal his churn numbers, Latka aggressively pushes back and lectures him on SaaS metrics, explicitly distinguishing logo churn from revenue churn. Chopra defends his market by explaining how lack of dedicated tooling ownership drives mid-market churn.8:32–12:50 · Guest teaching 2/10 Sponsor Message: Website Analytics with Hotjar Latka presses Chopra hard on his vague growth metrics, challenging his reluctance to share figures and directly questioning whether the business is actually flat. Chopra pushes back by refusing to give precise percentages while maintaining they are expanding product lines.12:50–15:40 · Guest teaching 1/10 Customer Acquisition Cost, Payback Periods, and Operations Latka calculates the payback period and CAC live on the spot from Chopra's fractional estimates, pressing him to verify if the math holds true before wrapping up smoothly with the Famous Five.0:49–3:00 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Introducing Founder Paras Chopra and Wingify Latka introduces Paras Chopra and covers foundational company basics like founding dates, bootstrapping status, and team size. The exchange is highly collaborative and informational with zero tension.3:00–8:29 · Guest disagreement 4/10 VWO Product Capabilities and Mid-Market Optimization When Chopra hesitates to reveal his churn numbers, Latka aggressively pushes back and lectures him on SaaS metrics, explicitly distinguishing logo churn from revenue churn. Chopra defends his market by explaining how lack of dedicated tooling ownership drives mid-market churn.8:32–12:50 · Guest disagreement 5/10 Sponsor Message: Website Analytics with Hotjar Latka presses Chopra hard on his vague growth metrics, challenging his reluctance to share figures and directly questioning whether the business is actually flat. Chopra pushes back by refusing to give precise percentages while maintaining they are expanding product lines.12:50–15:40 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Customer Acquisition Cost, Payback Periods, and Operations Latka calculates the payback period and CAC live on the spot from Chopra's fractional estimates, pressing him to verify if the math holds true before wrapping up smoothly with the Famous Five.0:49–3:00 · Nathan pushing back 1/10 Introducing Founder Paras Chopra and Wingify Latka introduces Paras Chopra and covers foundational company basics like founding dates, bootstrapping status, and team size. The exchange is highly collaborative and informational with zero tension.3:00–8:29 · Nathan pushing back 7/10 VWO Product Capabilities and Mid-Market Optimization When Chopra hesitates to reveal his churn numbers, Latka aggressively pushes back and lectures him on SaaS metrics, explicitly distinguishing logo churn from revenue churn. Chopra defends his market by explaining how lack of dedicated tooling ownership drives mid-market churn.8:32–12:50 · Nathan pushing back 8/10 Sponsor Message: Website Analytics with Hotjar Latka presses Chopra hard on his vague growth metrics, challenging his reluctance to share figures and directly questioning whether the business is actually flat. Chopra pushes back by refusing to give precise percentages while maintaining they are expanding product lines.12:50–15:40 · Nathan pushing back 4/10 Customer Acquisition Cost, Payback Periods, and Operations Latka calculates the payback period and CAC live on the spot from Chopra's fractional estimates, pressing him to verify if the math holds true before wrapping up smoothly with the Famous Five.

speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Nathan 53.8% · guest 46.2%0:00 · Nathan 53.8% · guest 46.2%3:00 · Nathan 20.6% · guest 79.4%3:00 · Nathan 20.6% · guest 79.4%6:00 · Nathan 55.9% · guest 44.1%6:00 · Nathan 55.9% · guest 44.1%9:00 · Nathan 69.3% · guest 30.7%9:00 · Nathan 69.3% · guest 30.7%12:00 · Nathan 55.3% · guest 44.7%12:00 · Nathan 55.3% · guest 44.7%15:00 · Nathan 82.8% · guest 17.2%15:00 · Nathan 82.8% · guest 17.2%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 11:30 Chopra refuses to give growth percentage

Chopra pushes back against Latka's attempts to box him into a 20-40% growth bracket, explicitly stating he prefers not to talk about growth rates.

 Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 12:02 Latka confronts Chopra on flat growth

Latka rejects Chopra's framing about working on new products and directly asserts that Chopra's evasiveness means the business has been flat.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:48 Chopra explains optimization workflow churn

Chopra provides insightful domain context on why conversion rate optimization software suffers higher churn than CRMs due to fractional role ownership in smaller companies.

 Nathan holds their own ▶ 6:46 Latka defines logo churn versus revenue churn

Latka demonstrates deep SaaS domain fluency by correcting Chopra's conflation of plan pricing with logo churn, explaining the exact role of cohort-based revenue churn.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicNathan as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementNathan pushing backWhy
Introducing Founder Paras Chopra and Wingify 2101 Latka introduces Paras Chopra and covers foundational company basics like founding dates, bootstrapping status, and team size. The exchange is highly collaborative and informational with zero tension.
VWO Product Capabilities and Mid-Market Optimization 7347 When Chopra hesitates to reveal his churn numbers, Latka aggressively pushes back and lectures him on SaaS metrics, explicitly distinguishing logo churn from revenue churn. Chopra defends his market by explaining how lack of dedicated tooling ownership drives mid-market churn.
Sponsor Message: Website Analytics with Hotjar 6258 Latka presses Chopra hard on his vague growth metrics, challenging his reluctance to share figures and directly questioning whether the business is actually flat. Chopra pushes back by refusing to give precise percentages while maintaining they are expanding product lines.
Customer Acquisition Cost, Payback Periods, and Operations 5124 Latka calculates the payback period and CAC live on the spot from Chopra's fractional estimates, pressing him to verify if the math holds true before wrapping up smoothly with the Famous Five.

Statements from this episode (10)

Disclosure
Chopra: Wingify is fully bootstrapped with no outside funding
“Bootstrapped. We haven't raised any funding.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 2:51
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chopra: Wingify employs about 200 people
“About 200.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 2:58
Disclosure
Chopra: VWO Targets Mid-Market and Enterprise Over Single-Person Shops
“Typically we work with mid-size businesses, so not very small e-commerce clients like a one-person e-commerce shop will not be very good fit with but anything on the midsize or enterprise side, we work well with them.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 3:07
Disclosure
Paras Chopra: VWO's pricing sweet spot is $300 to $500 monthly
“So you can think of it as something like maybe 300 to 500 dollars per month. That range is the sweet spot where we play in.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 5:02
Insight
Chopra: Monthly logo churn above 3% is bad for SaaS
“So, I mean, you can talk about anything, say, above three percent as a bad churn. At least that's how I look at things.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 6:24
Disclosure
Chopra: VWO has low enterprise churn but high SMB churn
“Enterprises, we hardly have churn, but I mean, we have a spectrum of custom. For small businesses, definitely more than that.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 6:40
Insight
Chopra: A/B testing software churn drops with dedicated optimization teams
“So if a marketer at a small business is doing email marketing, SEO, AdWords, and also AB testing, it's not That person's main responsibility. So it hasn't gone into the workflow for many businesses yet, but for businesses who have dedicated resources and teams…”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 8:09
Disclosure
Chopra: VWO has about 5,000 paying customers and PushCrew has 1,000
“Yeah, about 5000 for VW and a thousand for Bush Group.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 9:42
Disclosure
Chopra: Wingify generates about $18 million in annual revenue
“So we're doing about 18 mil, about 18 mil per year.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 10:20
Disclosure
Chopra: Bootstrapped Wingify spends one-sixth to one-fifth of LTV on CAC
“Typically since we've been bootstrapped, we spend say one-sixth of the LTV or one-fifth of the LTV. We haven't gone as far as like one-third or one-twelfth. We haven't been very aggressive.”
Paras Chopra May 21, 2018 ▶ 13:23
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