Thomas Dullien's Practical Guide to B2B Software Entrepreneurship: Lessons from Two Exits
Thomas Dullien (Halvar) shares his entrepreneurial journey founding two B2B software companies — zynamics (bootstrapped, sold to Google) and optimyze (venture-backed, sold to Elastic). He provides practical, hard-earned lessons on entrepreneurship covering topics like founder psychology, hiring, product-market fit, sales, pricing, and the realities of building and selling companies. The guide emphasizes that neither exit was a "Silicon Valley success" but both were life-changing for founders and employees, offering a grounded, non-glamorous perspective on building software businesses.
Key quotes
Neither of these exits were 'successes' by Silicon Valley standards, but they were definitely impactful and possibly life-changing for founders and most employees.
I founded two companies — zynamics, which I ran from 2004 to March 2011 and which I sold to Google, and optimyze, which I ran from 2019 to November 2021 and sold to Elastic.
The first company was bootstrapped, initially with no cofounder (an early employee received a big equity stake later), the second company had a cofounder and was venture-backed.
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