Wufoo Sold For $35 Mil. Here’s The Story Behind Its Success.

I’ve never republished an old interview, but after reading Kara Swisher’s post about Wufoo‘s sale to SurveyMonkey, I thought to myself, my audience has to hear the Wufoo story.

A few points from the interview:

– The business idea — a web app that lets people create forms — came from Paul Graham during Wufoo’s Y Combinator interview.

– At first, the founders didn’t want to get into the forms business. Kevin Hale, one of the three co-founders told me, “We looked at other form builders, and we were like, ‘All these people are crappy. And we don’t want to be in that space.’” Then it dawned on them. If everyone in the space is crappy, then they can stand out by creating an exceptional user experience.

– The name “Wufoo” comes from a combination of the first parts of “Wu Tang Clan” and “Foo Fighters.

– After raising $18,000 from Y Combinator (according to TechCrunch), Paul Graham and Paul Buchheit personally invested $50,000 in the company (according to the interview).

– The founders personally send thank you notes to customers who sign up. (I got one when I first became a customer.)

Watch the full program

Download the program

Just the audio (MP3 format)

The transcript (Google doc)