Litmus: How A Secondhand Computer Turned Into A Multimillion Dollar Business – with Paul Farnell

Paul Farnell, Litmus, B2B, Bootstrapping, Marketing, Mental Game, SaaS (software as a service)

Paul Farnell is proud that he launched Litmus with a used computer and a few hundred bucks, instead of raising money for his company from investors.

But starting a business with little money meant he needed a lot of hustle, and you’ll hear him talk very openly about the feats he pulled off. I was going to add a few examples to this intro to give you a sense of how he did it, but I think you’ll miss the value if I take them out of context. Instead, I’ll tell you that if you trust me at all to steer you towards ideas you need to hear, you should grab this interview ASAP.

Paul Farnell

Litmus

Paul Farnell is the co-founder of Litmus. Litmus tests and tracks your email campaigns, so you can always put your best design forward.

 

Andrew Warner: Three messages before we get started.

First, do you know someone who wants to build an online store? Would you tell them that I said Shopify is the easiest way to build a robust store? When electric car pioneers, Tesla Motors, wanted to build their online store, they chose Shopify and so should you. What will you sell online after you discover Shopify?

Next, are you still coordinating projects by e-mail and wondering why you’re not productive? Check out TeamworkPM.net. TeamworkPM.net is trusted by big organizations like Universal Studios, right down to small two-man operations. How will you team benefit from a productivity boost by using TeamworkPM.net.

Finally, do you want to build a web app that interacts with phones? Twilio makes it easy. The founders of PagerDuty created a web app that tells site administrators when their systems are down. By using Twilio, they could send alerts via phone and SMS to their users. They didn’t...

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Published: Jan 14, 2011