In episode 705, Rob Walling interviews Braden Dennis, co-founder and CEO of FinChat. They discuss Braden’s journey going from fully bootstrapped, all the way to taking venture capital as FinChat scaled. Braden shares his experience in initially launching to an audience, how they successfully launched a second product, and how FinChat operates well with multiple co-founders.

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Topics we cover:

2:55 – What does FinChat look like today?
4:00 – Starting with an audience and building a SaaS
6:40 – Formulating the product and moving upmarket
8:35 – Launching a second product
12:25 – The common pitfall of launching a second product
16:25 – How FinChat found explosive growth
19:27 – Deciding to take venture funding
26:13 – Making hard decisions with incomplete information
30:31 – Working with multiple co-founders

Links from the Show:

Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024
Apply for Director of Marketing and Operations for MicroConf
MicroConf YouTube Channel
TinySeed
Braden Dennis (@BradoCapital) | X
FinChat (@finchat_io) | X
FinChat
Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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Episode 705 | From Bootstrapped to Mostly Bootstrapped to Venture Backed

Startups For the Rest of Us