How we got to $1 million in annual recurring revenue with $0 in fundraising

In March, 2016, Josh and I each took $2,500, put it in a bank account, and filed the paperwork to found Gruntwork. That $5,000—the minimum you need to open most business banking accounts—is the only money anyone has invested in Gruntwork to date. Today, we’re excited to share that, about 2.5 years later, with no fundraising, no debt, and not even a single ICO, we’ve hit a big milestone: $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

This is a big deal for our tiny startup, but instead of a self-congratulatory, rah-rah-rah, look how awesome we are blog post (OK, we’ll do a little of that too, we’re human after all), I thought this would be a good time to pause and share 3 lessons that helped us get here:

If you want to learn more about startups, check out my book, Hello, Startup: A Programmer’s Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams.