Patrick Campbell

Brought to you by Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny | Amplitude—Build better products: https://amplitude.com/ | Dovetail—Bring your customer into every decision: https://dovetailapp.com/lenny—Patrick Campbell is the founder and CEO of ProfitWell, which he bootstrapped and sold for over $200 million. In this special episode, we explore 10 big ideas from Patrick, including tips for hiring employees who align with your company values, creating winning pricing and retention strategies, determining the right time to raise money, and more. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale your SaaS business, this must-listen episode offers practical and actionable advice that will help you avoid missteps and think differently.Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/10-lessons-on-bootstrapping-a-200m-business-patrick-campbell-profitwell/#transcriptWhere to find Patrick Campbell:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Patticus• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickccampbell/• Email: pc@patticus.comWhere to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/Referenced:• Douglas Atkin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doatkin/• Patrick Campbell’s guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy/comments• ProfitWell: https://www.profitwell.com/• The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup: https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8• Edward Snowden on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Snowden• The Flywheel: https://www.hubspot.com/flywheel• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355• Powerful: https://www.amazon.com/Powerful/dp/1939714206/r• The West Wing on HBOMax: https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GX5nwgQDNJZ6aoQEAAAHJ• Notion: https://www.notion.so/• Descript: https://www.descript.com/• Coda: https://coda.io/• KTool: https://ktool.io/• Tweet Hunter: https://tweethunter.io/• Apple Watch Ultra: https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-ultra/• Loom: https://www.loom.com/In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Patrick’s background(05:12) Building a team(07:38) How ProfitWell handled a conflict using their guiding principle, the most charitable interpretation(10:41) Why new hires need to fit in with the company culture(12:19) The bootstrapping vs. funding debate(13:38) When founders should think about raising funds (18:08) When and how companies should make pricing changes to their products or services(23:46) Strategic retention and tactical retention, and why the latter is often missed (28:48) Why people don’t want to pay for a SaaS analytics tool(29:56) The importance of mission metrics for shipping(34:42) First-principle thinking, the “5 whys,” and Patrick’s alternative approach(40:21) The importance of frequent customer research(43:15) Simple strategies for doing customer research(46:13) Understanding your competitors(51:06) Why veterans make great hires (54:08) Why local strategies are more effective for some companies(59:21) Why the middle of the funnel is the biggest opportunity (1:04:54) Lightning roundProduction and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Welcome to another episode of the Product Thinking podcast. This week, host Melissa Perri is joined by Patrick Campbell, CEO of Profitwell. They discuss all things pricing, diving deep into the psychology behind pricing models and how to choose a pricing strategy. Patrick talks about the biggest mistakes businesses make when pricing, when and how often you should be raising your prices, how to align your price changes with your value metrics and communicate those changes to customers, and more. You’ll hear Melissa and Patrick talk about: Patrick's team developed a financial analytics product and decided to give it away for free in order to get more data and improve their algorithms. 37,000 companies have used it in the past seven years. Patrick's company was acquired by Paddle for $200 million in May 2022, with a mission to grow subscription companies automatically. Pricing is a core competency for a business and should not be treated as a quick task to be done and moved on from. It is the very essence of a business as it represents the value of a product or service and how it is perceived by customers. Businesses should experiment with monetization once per quarter and raise prices once per year. Raising prices too often can lead to customer churn. However, this eventually normalizes as ‘fence-sitting’ customers leave. Make sure your price increase is justified by the value you provide to the customer. Align your pricing with a value metric, such as revenue. Packaging and pricing go hand in hand and can be thought of in terms of charging different prices for different pieces of value of the product. Sustaining a social media platform like Twitter is difficult, and it can be hard to monetize. Adobe's move from selling Photoshop for $1,000 to a subscription model of $32 a month was an "eye-opening" change that allowed for more investment in the product. It's important to get the finance team aligned with the move to a subscription model, as costs will initially go up and revenue will initially go down. Pricing is a whole company problem, not just a product problem. ResourcesPatrick Campbell Website | Email | LinkedInProfitWell

Today, I’m talking to Patrick Campbell, founder of ProfitWell, a bootstrapped business that recently got acquired by Paddle for a whopping 200 million dollars.I talked to Patrick about getting acquired for 9 figures, finding your footing as a founder after such an incredible exit, where the online payment industry is heading, and how mental health challenges follow us wherever we go.00:00:00 Introduction00:01:04 Patrick's entrepreneurial journey00:03:10 A different approach to marketing00:06:23 Help Sells: providing free value and then selling00:13:53 Dealing with a $200mil exit00:15:55 Filming a documentary while exiting00:19:03 Keeping the company running during the sale00:24:42 Anxiety during the sale00:28:08 Anxiety AFTER the sale00:34:12 Jumping right back into work00:37:28 Building trust with your team00:41:49 Defining your role in a deal00:45:05 Will Patrick ever take a vacation?00:49:38 It never ends: mental health for founders00:54:05 The future of the payment industry- Life After a $200mil Exit with Patrick Campbell- Find your Following, my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course- Zero to Sold & The Embedded Entrepreneur, my books on entrepreneurshipThis episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire. You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

Earlier this year ProfitWell founder Patrick Campbell sold his company to SaaS payments platform Paddle for $200M. On today's show Patrick sits down to chat about the good, the bad and the ugly of selling your company, applying first principles to subscription growth, and creating content for your audience, not search engines.You'll find a full transcript here: https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/profitwell-founder-patrick-campbell-on-life-after-acquisition/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Patrick Campbell is the founder and CEO of Profitwell, a suite of subscription revenue products that help to reduce cancellations, optimize pricing and get accurate revenue reporting.Show Notes:• https://saasclub.io/327Join Our Email List• Get weekly SaaS learnings, new podcast episodes, and actionable insights right in your inbox: https://saasclub.io/email/Join Our Community for Free• SaaS Club is the community for early-stage SaaS founders and entrepreneurs: https://saasclub.co/join

In 2012, Patrick Campbell founded ProfitWell to help SaaS companies increase revenue and reduce churn by managing their data in a single place.  After bootstrapping the business to 8-figures, Campbell decided it was time to raise money. While seeking a financial investor, Paddle approached him with an acquisition offer. Soon after, in 2022, Campbell sold ProfitWell to Paddle for over $200 million.

Brain-hurt scale = 7/10. Patrick Campbell's story is fascinating. From rural Wisconsin to the NSA and then bootstrapping a tech company to a recent $200m sale. Sounds crazy until you learn how his mind works and the sharp business intellect that's feeding success.  In a world of social media influencers and industry commentator journalists, we can easily listen to conflicted advice. The truth isn't a dominant voice, so it gets lost. So today, you can hear first-hand from someone who has grown a business from scratch and all the ways they did it. What worked, what didn't. What is timeless, evergreen sage advice. And what wouldn't work as effectively today.  And the TL:DR version of this episode is - if you adopted Patrick's business mindset, you'd save a large degree of wasted effort.  One of the most important points we touch, is the dangers of buying into a playbook that's worked for another firm and trying to apply it without considering context.  And the whole conversation weaves throughout the history of his business, from the genesis of Price Intelligently > Profitwell > Paddle. And all the things the team did to grow it in the early days. Versus how it ticks along today.  Included is: - how he thinks - how he approaches growth strategy that works. His growth mindset approach to marketing - how he sits on $24bn/year of data from subscription businesses, and can tap into that accurate sample to base what he says in this talk with fact - not opinion  - churn - is it only bound by macro brand factors or is it more complex than that? - how to choose the right marketing freelancers or vendors - and how to assemble an effective team - the dangers of playbooks and 'copy/paste' marketing - the best ratio of planning to execution - how he approaches which channels to use for growth. How it's changed over time and his current advice - the difference between content marketing verses content creation - attribution - measuring the right things with your marketing spend - decision-making & hierarchies - competitive intelligence - first-principal thinking - quilting  Wait what?  Listen

What does a $200 million+ acquisition look like up close? How much time, focus, and communication happens between the first conversation and closing the deal? And when do the CEOs of each company just need to use the "red phone" and have a direct conversation without the 86(!) lawyers in the room?  We sit down with ProfitWell founder and CEO Patrick Campbell to answer it all, centering on ProfitWell's recent acquisition by Paddle. And incredibly, Patrick built and scaled the SaaS company without taking a single dollar of investment! If you're running a company that may one day need to navigate an acquisition (or just curious), tune in!  Links:  - Our Previous Episode with Patrick, a Masterclass on Pricing - The Documentary: "We Sign Tomorrow?" ‍Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world’s most performant blockchain, the BEST place for developers to build Web3 applications, and of course very near & dear to the Acquired community’s heart. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you), and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by the Acquired community's very own Austin Federa! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

How do you get started in media as a founder? Kipp and Kieran are joined by Patrick Campbell (Founder of Profitwell, CSO at Paddle) to discuss how to sell the marketing-first ideology to your founder, thinking about the editorial taste for your media company, creating interest in your product, and more!Who is Patrick Campbell?CSO at Paddle.com after recently founding and selling ProfitWell.com. Background in Economics and math. Started career working at NSA and Google before jumping into the tech world. Deep knowledge on subscription/SaaS market benchmarks, retention, inbound media, and pricing.Check out Patrick’s work! Twitter www.twitter.com/patticus LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/patrickccampbell More info on Profitwell joining Paddle https://twitter.com/Patticus/status/1529420966698287105?s=20&t=K1wSUC9SeAyf7o8Sh9-luQ Paddle www.paddle.com Profitwell https://www.profitwell.com/ Thank you for tuning into Marketing Against The Grain!Don’t forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts (so you never miss an episode)! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-against-the-grain/id1616700934 If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://link.chtbl.com/h9_sjBKH and share your favorite episodes with friends.We really appreciate your support.Links:Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat‘Marketing Against The Grain’ is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke.

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk to Founder & CEO at ProfitWell, Patrick Campbell (@Patticus), about the billion dollar quilting industry, using spy secrets in business, buying cheap debt and a hostile takeover of a person.Also, want $5,000? Check out the My First Million Clips contest.-----Links:* ProfitWell* Missouri Star Quilt Co.* Hallmark* KMikeyM* Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.* Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter.-----Show Notes:(01:35) - Patrick Campbell background(07:55) - Surprising businesses: Quilting and craft industry(20:55) - Chili's and Applebees(25:25) - Why you should invest in unsexy businesses(26:50) - Rolling up trades & things for old people(30:05) - Using spy secrets to get competitive intel(46:30) - Buying debt to forgive it(49:40) - How it feels to get very rich very young(55:00) - Hostile takeover of a person-----Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.-----Additional episodes you might enjoy:• #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits• #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future• #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto* #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett• ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates• Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More• How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More