You don't need to crash a plane to learn to fly ... and you don't need VC to build a business.

$10M ARR is the FU MONEY of SaaS. At $10M ARR bootstrapped, you and your co-founder clear $1M+/year in salary and dividends easily. You can sell instantly for $30-40M. There are hundreds of EBITDA buyers at this level vs. a handful at $1B valuations. From here, you can do whatever you want. Hire a CEO and work 1 hour/week. Grind 100 hours if that's your thing. Raise $50M from a position of strength. Scale to $25M ARR with 25 people and pay yourself $10-15M/year. Most companies never get here because VCs show up early with decacorn dreams and money you don't need. That capital interferes with the one thing that makes you great: product-market fit. Bootstrapping to $10M ARR is easier and less risky than creating a VC-backed unicorn, with a far higher probability-weighted outcome. If you can find PMF and use customer money to get to $10M, you can do anything you want with your life.

In my 20’s, I used to work on Wall Street. People my age now (45) said they were working 70, 80, 90 hours a week for their families…but all their families actually wanted was their presence. They didn’t understand why their families resented how much they worked when they lived in a nice house, and their kids went to private schools. It was just the world we all lived in. We knew nothing else. I decided early in my startup journey that wasn’t going to be me. My co-founders and I have always had a policy of quitting at 5 or 5:30. By that, I mean: > Shut off my laptop > No more work talk > Go home to my family Frequently I’m out even earlier - 3-5, depending on whether I want to do something with the kids. I rarely travel for work and don’t entertain for work. My family life gives me energy for my work. My work gives me energy for my family life. I'm trying to stay not burnt out and excited about this for several decades. Can every founder choose this? Maybe not everybody, but more people have the choice than realize they do. There is great reward that comes from designing a business around the life you want.

2019: I want a $25m ARR biz w/ >35 FTE. retention.com/ today: $23m ARR, 27 FTE. 2024: $10m ARR w/ 3 FTEs is the dream. rb2b.com/ Today: $9.5m ARR, 3 FTE’s Today: I want a $1B ARR 1 man startup. moltsets.com/ in 2028: …to be continued...

FOUNDERS - WHAT KIND OF FUCKING MORON SIGNS UP FOR THIS???

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Here's my startup hiring philosophy: Hire people that would be great founders, but are too risk-averse to start their own thing. The key is giving them free rein to own their area of the business. Try to control them, and they leave. Freedom leads to great culture.

Me in 2019: > Drinking 2-4 beers/drinks every night > Getting hammered once a week with friends > Drinking was 100% of my stress relief AND social life > Weighed 225 (20lbs heavier than now) > Looked like I was 45, when I was 39 > Business stuck at $3M ARR for the third year in a row Me in 2026: > Zero booze or drugs of any kind in 5.5 years > Stress relief is sauna, cold plunge, and wakesurfing > Social life is hanging out with people who have kids > Weigh 205 (20lbs lighter) > Look like I did when I was 34 (and I'm 44) > Personally making 10x > Happily married, two young kids, settled in Aspen Every founder I know drinks. It's just what you do. Drinks at business dinners, celebrations…nobody questions it. I'd been drinking so much for so long that when I stopped, it felt like I had a superpower. For anybody who drinks every day: if you take 3 months off, you will notice an ENORMOUS difference in the quality of your life. You'll feel like you got 25% of your life back. You'll be more present in all of your relationships. You'll be far more intentional in everything you do. You'll be much better at home and at work. I only wish I did it sooner.

RB2B is a $10m ARR company with 1 FTE. I'd be OK if it never grew another dollar. Why? Because what makes it work are the constraints. We designed a stupid-simple PLG product that could be supported entirely by @fin_ai. The McDonald’s of site visitor ID. I know most founders don't agree with this approach... I can’t tell you the number of times - since BEFORE LAUNCH - people told us we needed to use AI to filter for ICP, find more contacts, draft messaging, and send emails and LinkedIn messages. And it’s what all of our competitors did (who are now all DEAD). While we kept the core product in its simplest possible form. In fact, it’s STILL HAPPENING. Last week on the way home from our all team offsite in Toronto my buddy @jesseogtm was yelling at me about how I needed to roll MoltSets into RB2B because it would solve our churn problem and double revenue. But here’s my question to founders: WHY DO WE NEED TO SOLVE OUR CHURN PROBLEM AND DOUBLE REVENUE? If you include our OEM $$$, RB2B is over $10m ARR. And it requires ALMOST NOTHING from us, while our core team goes on to build something we think has similar characteristics but is even MORE promising. Yes, we have a shared data team of 5 people who support four business units that total $32m ARR. Yes, Ebru does answer escalated tickets, and continues to improve Fin. Yes, Kayley handles OEM. But I am completely baffled that human nature makes it impossible for ANYBODY - even Jesse, a close homie and fellow bootstrapper - to accept that RB2B might just orbit at $10m ARR for the next 5-10 years, its product in its simplest possible form, supported by a SEARINGLY CLEAR value proposition, at a price so low that nobody can disrupt its market position. I listened to @dhh on @davidsenra's podcast on the way to the offsite. Of course I’m a sycophant, he and @jasonfried are my literal heroes. The first book I read when I decided I wanted to be a Founder was Rework. In the podcast, DHH made a point about how the HARDEST THING in 2026 as a software founder is to NOT BUILD EVERYTHING, because it’s so easy to build. He said there is something so beautiful about physical products where you finish it, bring it to market, and that’s what it is, on the shelf, forever… And since software isn’t that way, apps often become a bloated mess of noise. So I put it to you … What if RB2B’s revenue doesn’t grow anymore, EVER? What if the website and product are EXACT same 10 yrs from now? What if I launch a brand every 2-3 years that does the exact same thing? WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY ELSE THINK THAT WOULD BE AWESOME?!?!?! Because I do. And I’m going to keep doing it.

To be clear, I will not sign an NDA or redline ANYTHING whatsoever for our $79/mo PLG Web-ID product. Stop asking me over and over again to perform legal work so that your enterprise company can “run a test”. I know it’s impossible for you to believe that I don’t care about your business. But I don’t. RB2B is PLG, we serve the SMB, and we’re proud of it. And by the way - I think saying “no” to all things Enterprise is one of the things that makes RB2B so awesome. You can’t talk to someone even if you wanted to, and that’s BY DESIGN. We get away with it by having a product that is so simple and inexpensive that you don’t need to talk to people. If you need an NDA to use a $79/mo widget, were not the right fit. And thats okay. If you want to buy data, on the other hand … hit me up and our team GOT U!!! DM me. Our data is sick, particularly B2B2C.