The Art of Building and Exiting: Lessons from Two Serial Founders
- Eleven, Future of work
How to sell your startup isn’t always about perfect planning and elaborate exit strategies. Just ask Mihail Stoychev and Georgi Petrov, who sold two companies in four years by focusing on something else entirely – building genuinely valuable products and understanding their markets. Their story combines perfect timing with pure persistence, showing what it really takes to sell your startup. And behind it all was their secret sauce – a partnership built on trust, openness, and the ability to not take themselves too seriously.
The Path to Success Is Paved with Failed Attempts
This admission sets the tone for understanding their journey – one that wasn’t about overnight success but rather persistent iteration and learning.
Their breakthrough came with two products: SMSBump, a Shopify-focused solution that Mihail championed, and NitroPack, Georgi’s brainchild for web optimization. SMSBump, which Mihail playfully notes “won because we sold it faster and it grew faster,” essentially functioned as “MailChimp for text messages” in the e-commerce ecosystem. NitroPack, on the other hand, emerged as a powerful tool for making websites faster, eventually powering 0.1% of all active internet websites at the time of its acquisition.
The Recipe for Sustainable Success
The founders’ experience has produced a proven, low-risk approach to building successful companies that any entrepreneur can follow:
1️⃣ Focus on SaaS Plus Usage Model: Their business model consistently combines subscription revenue with usage-based pricing, creating predictable income streams while capturing additional value as customers grow.
2️⃣ Target Existing Ecosystems: Their strategy emphasizes leveraging existing marketplaces and ecosystems rather than building from scratch. This minimizes initial marketing costs and provides built-in distribution channels.
3️⃣ Build Superior Products Through Analysis: Their method for creating standout features follows a systematic approach:
– Start by deeply understanding the problem;
– Research and analyze existing solutions in the market;
– Create a comparative analysis of pros and cons;
– Ensure your solution is at least 5-10 times better than existing options.
4️⃣ Validate Through Customer Feedback: If you don’t have any customers yet, try to give your product for free just so you can get some feedback. Before expanding or working on pricing, founders need to have some basic idea about what people like or don’t like, and whether they are willing to use your product.
5️⃣ Master Market Timing: Success in product launches requires a delicate balance. The founders emphasize the importance of being neither too early nor too late to market, focusing instead on building adaptability and resilience into their development process.
The Power of Partnership and Customer-Centric Development
This humble approach to product development, combined with their strong partnership, has been fundamental to the founders’ success.
What makes their story particularly compelling is the strength of their co-founder relationship. Having known each other for years, they’ve developed a deep understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, creating a partnership that balances their complementary skills. Their partnership thrives on:
- Radical Honesty: They maintain complete transparency with each other and their team.
- Result-Driven Approach: They focus on simple, measurable outcomes rather than complex metrics.
- Shared Vision: Both understand that individual success is tied to collective achievement.
- Humor and Humility: They keep things light and don’t take themselves too seriously, even in competitive situations.
Practical Insights on Building and Scaling
Mihail and Georgi’s hands-on experience in building and scaling multiple companies has equipped them with valuable operational insights that any founder can learn from:
📌 Smart Product Testing: “Unlike most advice that you might get, we don’t speak to friends and we don’t speak to family,” Georgi explains. Instead, they advocate for launching something semi-functional quickly to get real market feedback. This approach allows them to validate ideas and iterate based on actual user input rather than assumptions.
📌 Strategic Marketing Approach: Through trial and error, they discovered that traditional paid acquisition channels weren’t the answer for their B2B products. Instead, they focus on content marketing and strategic partnerships. “PPC doesn’t work. It has never worked for us,” Georgi notes, explaining how they tested various approaches before finding what truly drove results.
📌 Effective Market Entry Strategy: For companies targeting the US market, they strongly advocate for founder relocation rather than remote hiring. As Mihail explains, “If you want to sell to US-based businesses, don’t hire someone and outsource. Let the founder move.” This hands-on approach allows for better market understanding and more effective team building.
📌 Customer Support as a Learning Tool: Both founders emphasize the importance of handling customer support themselves in the early stages. “It was a great thing to do that because you hear why people are paying, what are their pain points, and you can always promise that you’re going to do what they need,” Mihail shares.
The Exit Playbook - How to Sell a Startup
While many might assume that two exits in four years must have been meticulously planned, the reality tells a different story. “We never planned the exits. Neither of the exits was something we wanted to do,” Georgi reveals. Instead, their exits emerged from a combination of market awareness and strategic positioning.
Their advice for founders considering exits:
1️⃣ Build Relationships Early: Their SMS Bump exit to Yotpo began with a simple integration request years earlier.
2️⃣ Understand Market Dynamics: “You have to know what’s going on in the market,” Mihail emphasizes. They recognized market consolidation in both cases and timed their exits accordingly.
3️⃣ Leverage Strategic Partnerships: With NitroPack, they used a partnership as their “Trojan horse,” allowing potential acquirers to experience their value firsthand.
4️⃣ Never Skip VC Calls: “I never declined a call from a VC,” Mihail shares, explaining how each conversation helped them understand market perspectives and improved their pitch.
Looking Forward
Currently working on their next venture- Uxify, Mihail and Georgi remain committed to building efficient, profitable businesses rather than chasing unicorn status. “We’re all about bootstrap donkeys. I don’t believe in unicorns,” Mihail states firmly. Their focus on 50% EBITDA as a benchmark for efficiency showcases their practical approach to building sustainable businesses.
The Bottom Line
Their story demonstrates that startup success isn’t just about the exit numbers – it’s about building sustainable businesses through careful market positioning, strong partnerships, and a culture of continuous improvement. As they put it, “The best thing is to not sell your company, but for someone to buy your company.”
For founders looking to follow in their footsteps, perhaps the most important lesson is this: success rarely comes from the first attempt, but rather from the persistence to keep trying, the wisdom to learn from each attempt, and the humility to stay grounded even after achieving significant exits.
If you’ve missed “How a “killer feature” can substitute an entire sales team – SMSBump Case Study”, check it out and get an even better understanding of SMSBump’s recipe for success.