Rob Walling is the Co-Founder of TinySeed, a year-long remote accelerator for bootstrapped and non-unicorn SaaS founders, and the Founder of MicroConf, the original community for self-funded software entrepreneurs. Rising to prominence in the mid-2000s through prolific writing and podcasting, he became one of the most recognized voices in the bootstrapped SaaS movement — widely regarded as the practical counterpoint to the venture-capital-centric startup narrative.
Previously, he co-founded Drip, an email marketing and automation platform, in 2012. Alongside co-founder Derek Reimer, he bootstrapped Drip from a small email capture utility to a full marketing automation suite, achieving strong product–market fit after 14 months of grinding and eventually reaching millions in annual recurring revenue. Drip was acquired by Leadpages in 2016, the liquidity event Rob has described as his “never have to work again” moment. Through TinySeed, which he founded with Einar Vollset, he has since funded more than 200 SaaS companies, with a reported millionaire rate of 43% across the portfolio.
His earlier career included developer-for-hire roles at a credit card company, a startup, and a consulting firm in the early 2000s, followed by a stint as a real estate investor (four properties, seven units in Los Angeles) before fully committing to bootstrapped software. His first small software win, NET Invoice — invoicing software that generated $2,000–$4,000 per month — proved the model was viable without outside funding.
As host of Startups for the Rest of Us, a weekly podcast he has published without interruption since 2010, Rob has shipped over 738 episodes and accumulated more than 15 million downloads. He is also the author of Start Small, Stay Small (2010), a foundational text for developer-entrepreneurs, and The SaaS Playbook (2023).
Hey, Thanks for reading this. I mean that. There’s a lot of content out there competing for your attention, and you spent some of it here. I hope it was worth it. Even better, I hope it prompted you to think about something differently enough that you’d share it with someone who’d get something out of it too.I started this podcast because tactics never stuck with me. What stuck were stories — business biographies, autobiographies, the decisions people made and why they made them. The principle only clicks once you know the story behind it.
So I built the thing I wanted to listen to. Every week I have two conversations with people who build in technology and product. Then I write the essay in my premium newsletter (Taste Maker) to distill the principles and reflect on the narrative — one that puts you inside the conversation, through my eyes. What caught me off guard. What I kept thinking about after we hung up. Where the principle actually lives once you strip away the jargon.
I make this for myself first. If you read the way I do, you’ll want it too.
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