3X bootstrapping CEO and co-founder Melissa Kwan of eWebinar, an automated webinar platform with asynchronous chat engagement, recently sat down with the GetLatka team to discuss the growth and future of her 2-year-old SaaS. The seasoned bootstrapper Kwan revealed her motivation for building eWebinar, how she survived a $350,000 mistake, and why the CEO is committed to keeping her FT headcount at one.
Co-Founder Melissa Kwan, a self-proclaimed digital nomad, counts eWebinar as the third bootstrapped company she’s founded—all before turning 40. HomeSpotter, the leading real estate software platform, acquired her last company, Spacio, in 2019. While Kwan could not provide details of the transaction, she revealed that she left with a low 7-figure deal, allowing her to found and bootstrap eWebinar. Although the exit was favorable, the savvy CEO cautioned that she “sunk a decade” into the effort.
- $500,000 in ARR
- $60,000 total expenses burn rate
- 550 paying customers
Never VC, only friends and family worth less than 1X ARR
When pressed about her bootstrapped status, Kwan reiterated that she’s never taken VC money, only small investments from friends and family. Latka clarified that his threshold for bootstrapping is being capital-efficient with a friends and family investment of less than 1X ARR. Kwan quickly reiterated that her investments remained under that target.
Growing to $500,000 with no investors
Kwan revealed that she once took money from a private investor early in her founder’s career. She’s uninterested in going down that path again. “It made me realize that the only people that need to give you money are your customers,” she quipped. So far, her customers have given $500,000 in ARR to access the eWebinar platform. The co-founder then added, “There is no free money. You are responsible for reporting to them. You are not truly your own boss. There’s an added layer of pressure.” She concluded, “Bootstrapping is hard, but I would never give up that freedom.”
Dreamt of eWebinar for 5 years
Although eWebinar officially launched in 2020, CEO Kwan shared that she had dreamt of eWebinar for 5 full years before deciding to create the product. While at Spacio, she lamented how much time she and her team spent on live webinars, demos, training, and onboarding. Her mission with eWebinar is to help fellow bootstrappers replace costly live demos and onboard training with automated webinars that integrate live engagement. “We’re not trying to trick users with fake live automation,” she explained. Instead, eWebinar integrates asynchronous chat that allows live interactions 24/7, so teams never miss an opportunity.
$49 per month per webinar saves staffing
Co-founder Kwan insists that she strongly advises customers to be honest about recorded webinars: “Authenticity is your currency; never trick your customers. Tell them the webinar is recorded but that your team manages the chat live.” Kwan adds that they interact with asynchronous chat daily on support and websites and that eWebinar allows customers to have live chat integrated into automated webinars. Their pricing structure offers a flat fee of $49 per month per published webinar, no matter the number of users or attendees.
Price drops to $10 for enterprise customers of 25+ webinars
The more webinars hosted, the lower the cost per webinar. CEO Kwan shared that their current biggest customer houses 210 webinars for a cool $2000 per month MRR. “It saves a ton of manpower,” reiterated Kwan, alluding to eWebinar’s likely immediate ROI.
July 2020 launch after 18 months of development
Although eWebinar officially launched in July 2020, just two short years ago, Kwan shared that the product was in development for 18 months prior. During the initial stage of development, Kwan made a costly mistake that she readily admits today: she hired a dev shop before bringing on a co-founder to manage product development. “I hate managing people. I love sales and innovation, but not people management,” revealed Kwan. So, in the beginning, she outsourced everything, including development. “I thought the dev shop could do all the product stuff while I build the business, but I was wrong,” she lamented.
$350,000 lesson
“I learned that you need a person who thinks about the product daily. It was like having a restaurant without a chef,” shared the co-founder. She added, “after investing in a dev shop that was charging and building the product in phases, I found out from my life partner that the code wasn’t done the way it should have been done.” She soon discovered that her life partner was a skilled coder, so she struck a deal with him to come on board as her co-founder.
Dev shop replaced after 3 phases, negotiated equity split with life partner to be CTO
After gaining insights from her life partner, Kwan terminated her arrangement with the dev shop and turned her sights on negotiating equity. “I asked David to come on board and asked him what he thought was fair in terms of equity,” explained Kwan. David’s number aligned, and now Kwan controls 65% of the equity, with David taking 35%. She added, “I learned in a previous business that the CTO makes a great product and tech partner, but the business is built by the CEO.”
New Dev Shop in Ho Chi Minh City
The co-founders chose HDWEBSOFT in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. While Kwan praises their work, she notes, “We love Vietnam.” She added that she would not work with the dev shop unless a company has a Senior Development or CTO to manage the project. Her co-founder David manages all of their developers in Vietnam and still codes himself.
$60,000 burn rate, no founder salaries
CEO Kwan shared that eWebinar recently surpassed the $500,000 ARR mark, but her primary goal now is profitability. “We are very capital efficient, but we still need to close the gap between the $60,000 burn rate and $40,000 ARR,” she explained. Latka asked Kwan about ARR a year ago, noting it was at about $10,000.
How to grow past 550 customers is a work-in-progress
Kwan admits that she hasn’t yet figured out the best growth strategy for eWebinar. “Our current user acquisition is coming from word-of-mouth.” The CEO noted that 1:1 sales don’t work for them and that the company has invested heavily in SEO and content (like many B2B SaaS companies). “Our website traffic is up, but demos are stagnant,” lamented the co-founder.
Strong 25% conversion rate from demo to trial
The CEO shared that eWebinar’s current conversion rate from demo to trial is 25%. “From there, trial to pay conversion is 70%,” she added.
Everyone’s a contractor
CEO Kwan restated that everyone is a contractor at eWebinar, even her co-founder. Kwan shared that eWebinar has multiple content writers and people who do SEO. The COO is a great writer who heads up the content. Kwan shared that the team tried over 20 writers before honing in on a group of 3-4 that they rely on regularly.
Famous Five
CEO and co-founder Melissa Kwan shared that the last business book she read was Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo. Melissa’s favorite CEO to follow is Justin Welsh. She named Slack as her favorite tool for building eWebinar. Melissa sleeps a full 9-10 hours per night. She will soon turn 39. She has a life partner but no children, adding that “eWebinar is my child.” Melissa wishes when she was 20 she had known to start her own business early.
