Joel Liu's Library tagged Wufoo → View Popular, Search in Google

Apr

2011

news.ycombinator.com/item

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That's awesome news. Congratulations to the Wufoo team -- it is well deserved. (Their product is awesome.)
It is also great news for SaaS startup generally, since Wufoo is a little of column A and a little of column B on the typical grow via revenues VS get investment and grow massively dichotomy. That's a data point in the favor of at least some investors making investments in companies which have a projected trajectory where massive success results in a company on the scale of 37Signals/FogCreek/Wufoo rather than resulting in a company on the scale of Zynga/Groupon. $35 million won't exactly have VCs salivating but, oh well, if they don't invest they don't get a vote -- the angels and employees of Wufoo have to be happy like clams at this outcome.
If you consider a 10x multiple, revenues would have been in $3-4 MM range. Wufoo sets a great example for exits where VCs are not involved but are awesome for founders + employees.
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- Yeah, survey monkey does $40M/year in revenue. The company took $100M in debt financing to pay the founders, and put cash in the company coffers. The $100 million was more of a tax-arbitrage deal than anything else. (In the US equity payments are double taxed, but debt service isn't)