Bootstrapped in a basement; sold for $32,000,000

Francois Arbour, PremiumBeat

Today I have a guest who I have been talking to for over 10 years as he bootstrapped his company.

Francois Arbour is the founder of PremiumBeat, a curated library of royalty-free music for creative professionals.

He sold that company to Shutterstock and has gone on to do many other things. I want to know how a guy who started out in the basement became somebody so freaking good at building companies that he’s helping others do it too.

Francois Arbour

PremiumBeat

Francois Arbour is the founder of PremiumBeat, a curated library of royalty-free music for creative professionals.

Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy where I interview entrepreneurs. Joining me is a listener who I met when I did an event in Austin about, I guess it must’ve been almost a decade ago at this point. I

Francois: 10 years, 11 years.

Andrew: killer man. This is a guy Francoise Arbor, whose voice you just heard.

Francoise was living in a fricking basement at essentially working hard with his dad. You guys still have a good relationship.

Francois: Great. Fantastic.

Andrew: Fantastic relationship had this idea. You know, what, what if we could sell audio stock audio that people can use in things like their flash creations back when flash was the thing fricking bootstrap, the thing middle of nowhere, no one was paying attention to him.

I was so glad that he listened to Mixergy and we were introduced because then I invited him to do an interview about how this company that he...

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