Startups For the Rest of Us

In episode 603, Rob Walling chats with David Darmanin, one of the founders of Hotjar. Hotjar was bootstrapped to $40 million ARR with a fully distributed team of 170 employees. David and his cofounders sold the company for a 9-figure exit in 2021. From their incredible launch story and their unique DTC approach to sales and marketing in a B2B SaaS business to David’s mental models and the thought process behind selling the business, there is no shortage of key insights in this episode. Topics we cover:  [5:07] How David initially financed building Hotjar  [8:11] The biggest difference between Hotjar and its competitors   [12:03] The unique approach that David took when launching Hotjar  [12:44] Lessons learned from a failed product launch prior to Hotjar  [15:01] How they built their initial launch list to 60,000 subscribers  [19:32] How to know how much to spend on paid ads [24:53] Why David said it was easy to work 60-80 hour workweeks for the first 6-9 months of Hotjar  [27:22