Wistia co-founder Chris Savage discusses raising private debt to buy out early angel investors rather than pursuing venture capital or selling the company.
Insight
Savage: Overfunding killed early business video competitors
“Our market's been a very, very good market, but it has taken way longer than people expected. And you can look at the list of competitors we've had in the past, and many of them were overfunded, actually, and that's why they failed, because they tried to get t…”
Insight
Savage: Debt and profitability forced Wistia into long-term thinking
“It's almost like it forced us to be profitable, the debt, and that allowed us and forced us to be long-term focused, which again, these are like the opposite things I expected way before all of this would happen. Like I always assumed that, you know, people sa…”
Insight
Savage: SaaS predictability makes debt financing uniquely powerful
“And like, I think SAS actually can be incredibly, Powerful when matched with debt, because if you understand your unit economics with enough, enough depth, like if you understand churn, if you understand expansion, if you understand acquisition, you can actual…”
Insight
Savage: Targeting one-month payback forces 10x to 20x marketing returns
“What I've noticed is actually that people get obsessed with this, like year payback thing, because everyone says if you're not doing the year payback, then you're not investing enough in growth, but the problem is, like, it's so easy to do dumb stuff or things…”
Disclosure
Savage: Wistia only raised two angel rounds totaling $1.4 million
“We only ever raised two angel rounds. So for a total of 1.4 million, we raised 650,000 in 2008. And another about 800,000, a little less than that in 2010.”
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Savage: Early angel investors held preferred shares with veto power over sales
“Their shares also were preferred shares. And so it meant that they had rights to a board seat. They could block a sale.”