❤️ Mac's $58K MRR business

Hey - It’s Farzan & Guy,

Live from Sydney, Australia. There’s a summer feel in the air which is lush. It was a hot one today which always cheers us up. Let’s get into it…

Estimated reading time: 9 mins

In the mail today :

1. Founder story: Mac’s $58K MRR business ❤️

2. Founder story: The Angie’s list $1.2B success 😎

3. Founder playbook: The $1B lab grown meat business 🔥

4. Founder advice: Founder life balance  💥

5. Founder quote: From Simon Høiberg 🚀

 Founder story

From Concept to $58K MRR: The inspiring story of Mac Martine and Castanet's success.

A few notes about Mac Martine and Castanet:

🏠 Based in Portland, OR, USA
📅 Started in 2018
🚀 Reached $58k MRR
💰 Bootstrapped
👥 LinkedIn outreach automation tool
🏆 Successfully sold and exited the business

5 takeaways from Macs story:

👉 Listen to your market: Mac developed Castanet by directly engaging with potential customers and finding out their pain points.

👉 Leverage your product: Castanet used its own tool for lead generation, proving its effectiveness and driving growth.

👉 Embrace unexpected opportunities: Pivoting to a white-label model with resellers significantly accelerated growth.

👉 Focus on value, not just cool features: Mac learned to prioritize valuable ideas over simply "cool" ones that people wouldn't pay for.

👉 Know when to exit: Recognizing the stress of solo management led Mac to make a strategic decision to sell the business.

Read the full story to learn how Mac Martine built and sold a successful SaaS business in the competitive world of sales automation.

Founder story

How Angie founded Angie’s List with $50K and turned it into a $1.2billion company.

Angie Hicks and Bill Oesterle founded Angi (originally Angie's List) in 1995 with $50,000. It started as a local service connecting homeowners with contractors. The company grew slowly at first, then expanded rapidly after national advertising in 2005. It went public in 2011, was bought by IAC in 2017, and rebranded as Angi in 2021. Now a billion-dollar company, Angi continues to help homeowners find reliable contractors for home services.

 Founder playbook 

Dr. Uma Valeti’s journey to $1B Upside Foods and the future of lab-grown meat.

(founder playbooks are the strategies used by successful founders).

A few notes about Dr. Uma Valeti and Upside Foods:

🏠 Based in California, USA
📅 Started in 2015
🚀 Valued at over $1 billion
💰 Raised ~$400 million in latest investment round
👥 Pioneering lab-grown meat technology

5 takeaways from Dr. Uma Valeti's story:

👉 Follow your ethical compass: Uma's journey began with a personal ethical dilemma about meat consumption.

👉 Bridge disciplines: Uma combined his medical expertise in cardiology with food tech to create cultured meat.

👉 Embrace calculated risks: He left a successful medical career to pursue a groundbreaking but uncertain venture.

👉 Persist through scepticism: Uma turned widespread doubt about lab-grown meat into motivation.

👉 Scale with purpose: Upside Foods is tackling global challenges in sustainability, animal welfare, and food security.

Read the full story to learn how Dr. Uma Valeti is revolutionizing the meat industry with cultured meat technology.

 Founder advice

How to maintain a balance between work and personal life.

 Founder quote

An interesting founder angle from Simon Høiberg

I take great pride in being a "small founder" who's managed to craft multiple profitable companies with little money, no outside funding, and without burning myself out.

I'll never feel ashamed for not wanting to take it to the next level 😁

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See you next Sunday.

Guy + Farzan
Founderoo