Henry Valentino is the founder and CEO of EConnect, a leading provider of facial recognition software for casinos and stadiums, ensuring venue security and compliance. He founded EConnect in 2009 and pivoted several times before focusing on a security platform utilizing AI for casinos during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Econnect platform offers facial recognition surveillance software that integrates with special cameras at venue entrances to identify known security risks and ensure compliance. Security teams get immediate identification of “known bad guys” in large venues.

Econnect is approaching $10 million in revenue with hundreds of customers as a profitable business, with no outside equity funding. EConnect secured a total of $2 million in venture debt in 2019 and 2020, repaid it, and is now a growing and profitable company.

Quote from Henry Valentino, CEO and founder of EConnect

“Make sure you know your financial numbers yourself as the CEO. It's great to lean on accounting or finance leaders, but if you don't know them yourself, that's a big hindrance to success.

“Cash is what it comes down to. If the bank account doesn't have enough cash, they're only calling one person to get that resolved and that's you. If you get into trouble, you'll be trying to cut costs, which is not a way to grow a SaaS business.

“To continue growing, you need to increase your spending and capacity to take on new customers. How much does it cost to keep these doors open every month? How much cash are we going to bring in? What do we need to billl to put us in a profit position every month?”

Links

• Henry Valentino on LinkedIn
• EConnect on LinkedIn
• EConnect website
• Costella Kirsch

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Josh Turley is CEO of RTA Fleet Management, a fleet management software company that his grandfather started in the 1980’s and ran as a small family business for decades. Then Josh’s father ran the business until 2015, never growing this slow, old-school business past $2 million in revenues. Josh had worked in the business before, but in 2016, Josh bought the business, to over as CEO and slowly began to make improvements—and mistakes—as they started to grow.

Josh had an ambition to grow the company and learn how to be a real CEO. They started retooling their code to build modern cloud software, investing heavily for many years. They transformed their leadership, staff, business model, pricing, marketing, tech stack, and culture as they grew faster. They also focused on state and local government fleets as they grew.

The bootstrapped company grew steadily, with 75 employees and a $15 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) run rate in 2024, supported by some debt. In 2025, Josh closed a $30 million investment round from Susquehanna Growth Equity, a practical growth equity investor that invests in steady SaaS businesses.

Josh is a long-time member of my Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups. He is an avid learner, attending conferences, reading books, hiring consultants, and continually seeking new knowledge.

In this episode, Josh also talks about:

• How difficult it was to transform an old business into a new one
• Why their Purpose, Values, and Mission drive successful hiring
• Why he chose to take on growth equity investors and de-risk with secondary investment

Quote from Josh Turley, CEO of RTA

“Every problem is a leadership problem. The biggest challenge in building a SaaS business is always the people—making sure you get the right people on the bus in the right seats. We’re at 90 people now, and there's no way I can manage 90 people myself. As the CEO, it all starts with you, then your leaders.

“Most problems I see are because we got the wrong person in the wrong seat. You can't outrun that, regardless of how good the product is or how strong your financial model is. It will always catch up to you eventually, and that causes more problems than anything.

“When you get a leadership team to be 100% aligned with one another, it doesn't matter what the market's doing. It doesn't matter what the product is doing. It will figure itself out. It's a forcing function to get that alignment, and then you just can't be stopped at that point.”

Links

• Josh Turley on LinkedIn
• RTA on LinkedIn
• RTA website
• Susquehanna Growth Equity website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Sameer Narkar is the founder and CEO of Konnect Insights, a global SaaS company based in Mumbai that provides an omnichannel customer experience platform to consumer brands in 100 countries. Sameer created Konnect Insights in 2015 to help customer service teams respond to customers who mention their brands on social media.

The product and company have expanded from a slow start working through marketing agencies in India to now distributing through ISV partners in all major global regions. The Konnect Insights product includes social listening, ticketing, reputation monitoring, and social media analytics. They have grown to 140 employees, hundreds of customers, and $7 million ARR--without any outside funding.

In this episode, Sameer talks about:

• Selling through agency and ISV partners to grow efficiently
• Competing with large, well-funded software companies
• How he thinks about how AI can help them compete
• Why he hasn’t sold the company or raised outside funding

Quote from Sameer Narkar, founder and CEO of Konnect Insights

“When you start a software company, you have all odds against you. You don't have enough money. There's no reason why customers would trust you against the established products. There is a 99% chance that you'll fail.

“But if you're really passionate about what you're building, then don't look too far ahead. Try to achieve your smaller goals or get from zero to one. So just build something and get some early customers. We figured out a way for agencies to be interested in selling our solution to bring it to market.

“Then meet directly with your end customers. It's very easy for tech founders to sit in the office and build a product the way they think. That doesn’t work. Many founders think that if they take a half-baked product, they won't get another chance. But that's not the case. You need to build relationships to help you improve and grow..”

Links

• Sameer Narkar on LinkedIn
• Konnect Insights on LinkedIn
• Konnect Insights website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Chris Erler was co-founder and COO of ComX, a sales pipeline generation for mid-market B2B companies in Germany and Europe. Chris and two other founders started the company in 2018 to conduct turnkey modern digital marketing and lead generation solutions for traditional German companies.

As a tech-enabled service that combines technology, data, and people-powered solutions, ComX delivers proven results through subscription and outcome-based pricing. They grew quickly to approximately $20 million in revenue in four years before being acquired by the private equity firm FLEX Capital.

In this episode, Chris talks about:

• Growing a team of 70 employees in South Africa
• Starting in Germany with mid-market companies
• The challenges of debt financing of private equity buyouts

Quote from Chris Erler, cofounder of ComX

“99% of the time, I ask the founder, Why are you raising money from investors that early? I'm very pushy on that one because I know the freedom that you can create when building a bootstrapped business.

“For me, raising money from investors and giving away shares very early means you’re not focusing on customers, but rather focusing on collecting capital to build the product without having it validated too early. I just share our bootstrapped story with ComX which I believe works well.

“That's why I'm a big fan of your podcasts. There's a huge education needed, especially in Europe. People need to be educated on how to found properly. Of course, it can go well, but the chances that something f***’s up are much higher. And then young people are in a very bad situation.”

Links

• Chris Erler on LinkedIn
• ComX on LinkedIn
• ComX website
• FLEX Capital website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Aaron Steffey is the co-founder and co-CEO of Propeller, an online platform that enables insurance agents and brokers to issue surety bonds instantly — without the lengthy paperwork or back-and-forth typically involved in bonding. Aaron was an insurance agent, and his co-founder cousin, Chris, was a surety bond underwriter before 2019, when they set out to revolutionize the way surety bonds are bought and sold.

They initially bootstrapped with a software development partner who accepted equity instead of fees. Their first version drastically simplified the process of buying and selling surety bonds in the digital world, allowing them to grow quickly. They raised $7 million in SAFE notes from strategic partners to accelerate growth in 2021 and grow to nearly $20 million in revenue. They sold 100% of the company to Arch Capital in a strategic acquisition in early 2024.

In this episode, Aaron also talks about:

• How this sleepy, paper-based market changed quickly in COVID
• Why they raised growth funding from strategic investors and not VCs
• Why they sold the company and are still leading the business after the sale

Quote from Aaron Steffey, co-founder and co-CEO of Propeller

“My biggest advice for startup founders is simply just that endurance wins. It’s the whole thing of getting back up after you're knocked down, like everyone says. I had to live that so many times. So many No's when it came to our first carrier pulling out. No, I don't want to invest. No, I don't want to use your surety product.

“There were so many times when I wanted to give up. And the same with my cousin. Had we not founded the company together, I don't know that we would have continued because there were probably times when I would have given up.

“As long as both of us weren't on the floor, one of us would just pick the other up when the other person usually was more sane, and we dragged each other along.

“A successful founder needs to have a pretty high pain tolerance and endurance to succeed. You just have to keep pushing forward. It just sounds so cliche, but that’s what it was for us.”

Links

• Aaron Steffey on LinkedIn
• Propeller on LinkedIn
• Propeller website
• Arch Capital website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Roy van den Broek is the founder and CEO of Rentman, a rental business management software platform for event and media production companies. Roy built software for his event equipment rental business in the Netherlands. He had over 100 software customers in Europe before selling his rental equipment company in 2015 to focus on growing his Rentman SaaS company.

Rentman grew slowly and profitably as word of mouth spread in the industry and their product evolved. In 2024, after growing to nearly 100 employees and 200,000 users across 100 countries, Roy raised a $22 million growth equity round from Expedition Capital to derisk the founder's investment and add growth capital to continue expanding.

In this episode, Roy discusses how they managed the painful growth stages as they expanded from one employee to 80 global employees, building a multi-lingual product and business, and why he chose to raise a significant growth equity investment.

Quote from Roy van den Broek, founder and CEO of Rentman

“We had a lot of interest in investing in Rentman after COVID, so we ran a quick process. We ended up with 3 term sheets. You have multiple ways to look at these term sheets. You can look at the numbers and the valuation, which is a big part.

“But what's often overlooked is the other terms. The other terms are as important as the valuation because they really determine the way you work together. I think these terms might even be important or more important than the valuation. You got to understand their game and really figure out if you could get some alignment.

“In essence, you are negotiating the amount of autonomy that you have as a founder. That's basically what we prioritized. Like the board seats and who makes certain decisions, what are the decisions that require a majority vote? And I think we were able to get 100% autonomy on our side.“

Links

• Roy van den Broek on LinkedIn
• Rentman on LinkedIn
• Rentman website
• Expedition Growth Capital website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Gopal Krishnamurthy is the founder and CEO of Lumel, which has a suite of products focused on enterprise performance management (EPM). Their apps allow users to plan, report, and analyze data using the modern native app framework vs. traditional SaaS on top of modern cloud data platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, Databricks, and others. Lumel’s products provide a full stack of integrated Planning, BI & data apps on the customers' data platforms.

He grew his enterprise services company, Visual BI, to over 200 employees and sold that company to Atos in 2021, as he described in his first Practical Founders podcast interview in 2023. Gopal self-funded Lumel with a VC-sized investment and has grown it to over 300 employees in four years. Lumel is already at a revenue run rate of over $12M ARR and is growing fast.

Lumel is building its apps using modern cloud data platforms, not siloed SaaS databases, allowing it to manage real-time data across applications. This bold new vision and architecture for enterprise software apps align with modern data approaches supporting AI, creating a billion-dollar opportunity for Lumel in the future.

In this episode, Gopal also discusses:

• The challenge of transitioning from custom services to a no-touch product-led approach selling to enterprises
• Why VCs wouldn’t understand their technology bet and why their patience is paying off
• What it’s like to grow a fast-growth and innovative technology company as a bootstrapper

Quote from Gopal Krishnamurthy, founder and CEO of Lumel

“The main thing is it’s a big market. It’s not like we are just trying to get our first $10 million revenue. We have done that with Lumel already. We are looking at how we can get to a billion-dollar ARR business. That’s the big, bold vision. We have invested tens of millions already, and we are almost profitable.

“We think we can absolutely create a billion-dollar business based on our customer feedback and traction from 3,000 customers. So, it’s not a question of product market fit. We worked with hundreds of our enterprise customers and perfected our data app products.

“The other thing is that our products can work for smaller and medium-sized businesses because of our architecture and approach. It's completely horizontal: it works for all industries and all customers of all sizes.”

Links

• Gopal Krishnamurthy on LinkedIn
• Lumel on LinkedIn
• Lumel website
• Power BI website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Phil Stern is the operating principal of Mainsail Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in bootstrapped vertical SaaS companies. Mainsail offers deep operating support to the leaders in their portfolio companies to help them grow more efficiently. Phil leads the GTM operations team, helping their founders scale sales, marketing, and success teams.

Phil was an experienced SaaS sales leader at several companies before joining Mainsail to focus on helping their portfolio companies scale up to $30M ARR or more. Phil’s team helps founders solve challenging problems with sales leadership, rev ops technology, compensation, marketing analysis and planning, and more with deep operational insights customized for each company.

In this episode, Phil discusses these important topics.

• The five keys to hiring your first head of sales to graduate from founder-led sales to a scalable sales team
• How Mainsail specialists partner with founders and their leaders to help them solve their most important GTM problems quickly
• How Phil helps with due diligence on potential investments to assess the upsides and opportunities for revenue growth
• Why Mainsail is focused on vertical SaaS companies with founders who are experts in their domains

Quote from Phil Stern, Operating Principal at Mainsail Partners

“Hiring a first head of sales is typically one of the first roles we're going to hire. This sales leader needs to be willing to sell the product. You're not coming in at $5 million of ARR to be an armchair VP. You own part of the quota, you're going to cover for a rep at a trade show or on maternity leave, whatever it takes.

“You have to be willing to sell. So if you come in just to strategize and move chess pieces around, it's just not the job for you.

“If you don’t sell, you won't get close enough to the customer. For these customers in vertical end markets, you need to get close to them, learn from them, understand them, and speak to them.

“It's really back to a bootstrapper mentality. The CEO has been doing absolutely everything up and down the business. I'm asking a sales leader to do everything up and down the go-to-market.”

Links

• Phil Stern on LinkedIn
• Mainsail Partners on LinkedIn
• Mainsail Partners website

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.