Season 4, Ep. 38 – Founder to Founder: with Stefan Avram, Co-founder and Head of Growth, WunderGraph

(THE FRONTIER THEME PLAYS)

Bill, via previous recording (00:04):

Welcome to another Founder to Founder interview from Gun.io, your source for hiring world-class tech talent. Today, Gun.io’s CEO and co-founder, Teja Yenamandra, sits down with co-founder and Head of Growth, Stefan Avram of WunderGraph, a platform that offers full cycle GraphQL, API management. Okay, here’s Teja. (THE FRONTIER THEME ENDS)

Teja (00:34):

Where’d you grow up? In Miami or elsewhere?

Stefan (00:39):

So I grew up, so I moved when I was like, two from Serbia to Michigan. I grew up there, became a US citizen, until 10, and I was 10 around the fourth to fifth grade transition. I moved to Orlando, and I grew up here, and I, and I say like, I’m from Orlando, because I grew up here, and I went to college here as well. So after high school, I got a soccer scholarship, and I grew up right near here in Orlando, and I went to college in Rollins, and I played soccer there, and then I signed for Orlando City on like, a small contract, but then I got injured my senior year, and that went, you know, out the window. (Teja: Yeah.) So from there I was working at a startup, and then they had these huge layoffs during Covid, and so they let everybody go, and then in the middle of Covid I was like, you know what, like, I’m kind of tired of Orlando. I wanna go somewhere, and Mayor Suarez tweeted to Elon Musk, like, “How can I help?” and I saw that on Twitter, and I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna move to Miami,” and so I decided to pick up my stuff, and I moved to Miami.

Teja (01:35):

That’s sick. Wow. Okay, so did you, I mean, did you grow up playing soccer? Like, is that what you wanted to do professionally, initially?

Stefan (01:44):

Yeah. So I mean, that was like, my thing. Like, growing up, I was the soccer guy. I was Stefan…like, all my like, essays were about soccer, and like, my goal was to get a full ride scholarship to college, because the way you do it in America, is you get a soccer scholarship, and then from there, you go into the MLS. So I got a full ride to Rollins, which is like, 45 minutes from my house in Orlando. It’s a great D2 school, and the reason I went D2 was because, in D1, if you play professional, you can’t play D1, but in D2, you can. So we had all these ex, you know, kids from England that played professional, and they also gave me a full ride. So I went there, and that was my thing. I wanted to be a professional soccer player, and then I got signed for a homegrown contract and then tore my ACL. So that kind of ruined everything.

Teja (02:29):

Bro. Fucking ACLs. I hear you. Did you get it repaired, or are you just riding with it like, partially torn?

Stefan (02:37):

Nah, so I don’t know. I have the worst luck. Like, my senior year I tore my PCL, which is like, super easy like, to heal. It’s just four months, no activity, but it only happens like, 1% of tears, and if it’s isolated, like mine was, it’s super weird, but then when I signed for Orlando City, I tore my ACL. I had surgery, I recovered, but I decided, you know, I’m gonna go into tech, and then a year ago, I did my other ACL playing soccer again. So I was like, you know what? I think it’s time to retire from soccer <laugh>.

Teja (03:05):

<Laugh>. Did you get the other one repaired or…?

Stefan (03:07):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got them repaired, and like, I did the rehab, and like, you would never know the difference. You would just see the scars on my knee. But like, I still bench, and I still max squat like, 350, like, you know. (Teja: Yeah.) I’m very, very active, and I do my thing, so it doesn’t affect me at all <laugh>.

Teja (03:22):

No, no, I mean, I’m right there with you. Like, I trained Brazilian jiu jitsu, and I’ve been training that for a few years, but last year, I tore, partially tore my ACL, and I didn’t get surgery on it, ’cause they thought it would like…I also like, didn’t want to get surgery. I was like, training is like, what I love to do. I don’t wanna not train. If I don’t train, I’m gonna drink too much and like, not be productive in my life. That’s like, me, you know, because I get like, addicted to physical activities, and maybe I shouldn’t say this on a recorded line, but whatever (Stefan: <Laugh>.) <laugh>, and so I just like, kept training, ’cause I told the surgeon, I was like, “Dude, I don’t wanna not train.” He’s like, “Okay, well that’s fine,” and then this past July, I re-injured it. I re-tore the same ACL, and they were like, “You need to get surgery.”

Teja (04:15):

So I’ve been avoiding it. Like, I’m still like, lifting like, lateral movements or like, in one plane where you’re like, just going up and down deadlift squat I can do, but lateral movements like cutting, pivoting you know, that sucks. So I have not trained in like, three or four months, so we’ll see. I’m like, still pushing my numbers on squat and deadlift. So I feel like in a year, I’m gonna try to go back to jiu jitsu and see like, where it goes, but I don’t know. So I feel you on the intro, I was never like, a pro athlete or anything like that, which is obvious, but ACLs suck. They’re dumb. Yeah.

Stefan (04:53):

Yeah, I agree, but if I were you, I would do the surgery. Like, the only thing that sucks is the first like, week, because like, you know, you have to do the machine, and you have to like, re-tear your scar tissue, because it scars right away, (Teja: Yeah.) but after that, dude, like, if you do the PT, like, you’re back to normal, like nothing ever happened.

Teja (05:10):

Really? Okay. (Stefan: Yeah.) That’s cool. I just…I’m lazy, bro. Like, I don’t wanna like, take off a day of work and then go to like, PT and all this stuff every week, but I just need to like, sack up and just do it probably. So, yeah.

Stefan (05:25):

Yeah. I would recommend it. I did my surgery in the morning, and then like, I slept, but then I was back in the afternoon, because like, I could work from my laptop. So I’m still like, doing stuff and taking meetings and I’d put like, a virtual background. Like, my leg is in this machine going back and forth <laugh>.

Teja (05:40):

That’s baller. I respect that. Okay, well, we’re coming up on holiday season, and so things will probably be a little bit slow, at least on my end. So I have a surgeon that…he is like, “You should do this now,” so maybe I’ll call him and, you know, get that repaired, because yeah. It sucks not training. It sucks. So are you done with soccer permanently? Like, you’re not gonna play anymore?

Stefan (06:04):

Yeah. So like, I mean, I’ve been struggling with this, ’cause like, that used to be like, the best fitness. Like, I would burn crazy calories, and like, I had my good squad, my friends, and so now what I’ve done is I switched to paddle. So paddle’s really big in Miami, and it’s like, a smaller version of tennis and like, racquetball mix. You can hit it off the walls, and there’s some cool courts, and then I picked up golf. So with golf, I actually had no idea how hard golf is. Like, it’s probably one of the technically hardest sports. So I picked up that, and then I run, and I weight lift, and that to me is fine. I still don’t get that adrenaline that I used to like, with soccer, so I might still pick it up. I just have to convince my fiance to let me, because she took care of me both times, and she’ll get very upset if I do it a third time <laugh>.

Teja (06:46):

I hear you. Yeah, there’s a doctor in my academy who tore both of his ACLs, and the dude is like, a little bit older, but he still trains. He’s like, still (Stefan: Yeah.) doing the thing, you know, so it’s important man. Okay. That’s cool. Okay, so [you] decided to get into tech. What kind of inspired you to get into like, tech? Was it just, it’s exciting, it’s innovative, it’s something that you can sink your teeth into, or did you kind of grow up like, being nerdy and playing with computers and that sort of thing?

Stefan (07:21):

I like this question, ’cause I actually have a very interesting answer to it. So like, my whole family is in the medical field. So my mom has like, the biggest pediatric clinic for kids with special disabilities in Orlando. Like, she has like, 90 employees. Like, she has four offices, you know, and they have PTs, OTs, and then my uncles and aunts, they’re all doctors, like neurology and things like that. And so when I was in high school, I was president of the medical academy, and like, everything I did was to go towards medicine, and so when I started at Rollins, my first semester, I was pre-med, and so I was taking bio and chemistry, and I was leaving practice one night, and I stopped at a…I forgot who it was, there was just some engineer there, and he was giving like, a talk in the auditorium.

Stefan (08:05):

So I stopped by and whatever, and he was just kind of showing like, scenes from like, The Social Network, and he was just showing how like, you know, Steve Jobs and all these people that built, you know, amazing companies, that they studied computer science, and then he also put a slide, which was like, “This is how much you can make at this company,” and then I was looking at it, I was like, “Wait, like, that’s how much a doctor can make,” and he is like, “You can also go and start your own company,” and so after I saw that presentation, I was like, “Yeah, I gotta switch,” and so I switched, and my whole family is like, “What is computer science?” They’re like, “Why? Like, you’ve never, you know, dealt with computers,” and I was like, “Well, I like computers.” And then I did a little programming class, and I really liked it.

Stefan (08:41):

Like, I made a tic-tac-toe game, and I was like, “Okay, this is dope,” but then I also liked the collaborativeness of it, and so I switched. I didn’t look back, and I killed it. So I was doing really well in CS. I graduated, and I thought I was gonna be a soccer player, and then the injury happened, and I started working at this startup, and I said I got laid off, but like, I actually got fired, but the story is actually cool. So I was six months into it, and I was at…I forgot what happened. Oh yeah, I got switched into full-time after like, six months. I was just like, part-time at 30, and when you switch into full time, you get your 401k, and I did some research on the company, and this was the fifth company that these two founders, they’re two guys, they started five companies, four of them were unicorns.

Stefan (09:25):

So these guys just build and sell amazing companies. They did it in cybersecurity; they did it in risk management. This current one was cybersecurity, and so I emailed the CEO, I looked him up in the directory. There’s like, it’s still a startup, so there’s like, a hundred employees. I look him up in the Slack directory, and I find his email, and I messaged him like, “Hey, like, I know your track record. I know like, what companies you built. Instead of doing a 401k, can I do some private stock options?” <laugh>. (Teja: <Laugh>.) So I asked the CEO this, of like, a private company, and like, I mean, I didn’t think about it, because I was like, you know, like, now when I look back on it, I was like…that’s kind of stupid, but like, also it’s kind of ballsy, (Teja: It is <laugh>!) and so he emails me back, and he’s had like, over five to 10,000 employees like, at his company like, over the five years. Like, his last company had 2000 employees.

Stefan (10:10):

He’s like, “Hey Stefan. Like, good to hear from you. I’ve started about five companies. I’ve had over 5,000 employees. Nobody’s ever asked me that question. Let’s talk at the holiday party,” and the holiday party was that evening. And so I go to the holiday party with him, and I start talking to him, and he’s like, “Listen. I took a look at what you do at my, at our company. Like, you’re a security analyst. Based on that interaction you sent me, I think you’re in the wrong position. I don’t think you should be working at the company anymore. I think you need to go and start your own thing,” and I was like, “Well, what do you mean by that?” He’s like, “I think you’re wasting your time here as a security analyst, and so to motivate you, I’m gonna fire you in two weeks.”

Stefan (10:49):

I was like, “Whoa. Like, why? Why is this?” And then I thought he was joking, because like, we were both drunk or whatever, but two weeks later, he fired me, and I was like, “Wait, what?” So I went to his office, and I was like, “Why’d you fire me?” He’s like, “I told you. You need to go, and you need to start your own thing. Like, in tech, it’s a genius idea. Like, you have something that I see that I saw in myself. You need to go and do it,” and so then, I mean, that’s kind of how I got the bug was because of him, and like, he’s still like, one of my mentors now, and I still message him when I have questions about WunderGraph and things like that. And every now and then, he messages me, he’s like, “Listen, I told you so. Like, you know, like, look where you are now. It’s because I fired you.” So it’s kind of interesting kind of cool way, like, how the world goes in a circle.

Teja (11:26):

That’s so fascinating, because like, when you were sharing the story, I’m like, that’s kind of like, a weird move, you know, (Stefan: Right.) but it would strike me as like, this guy is mad that I emailed him and wants to fire me, but actually like, he was being honest in some ways. Like, you should just go start your own thing. So that’s super interesting, man. Wow, that’s kind of cool. I mean, it’s cool. I agree. Like, why would you want stock in a public company when you’re working at a company that you wanna invest in that company? Like, that makes sense, (Stefan: Yeah.) right? You’re building it. That’s how you make your day money. So why not? I like that. That’s cool.

Stefan (12:06):

Right now, they’re a Series D, and I joined like, C, so I definitely had an eye that this was gonna be a big freaking company, and like, if I would’ve gotten the option, which he didn’t smartly, like, it definitely would’ve been worth a lot of money now <laugh>.

Teja (12:18):

Yeah <laugh>. Well, I think, I mean, it worked out like, for you, (Stefan: It did.) right? I mean, that’s crazy. Did you tell like, your friends like, that happened? What was like, what did they say? Were they just like, I dunno.

Stefan (12:32):

I mean, I told my friends, and they didn’t believe me. They were like, “Nah, you just got fired,” but then like, I showed them the email, like, him like, afterwards. Like, me and him still keep in touch. Like, he’s a really nice guy, and like, he wants to be an angel in our Series A, and so he is like, “Whatever you do next, like, I’d love to support you.” And like, me and him still keep in touch, because he has a house in Miami, so whenever he’s down, me and him like, you know, we’ll grab coffee. He’ll ask me things, and he’s kinda like, a really good mentor of mine, and like, my mom right away, she laughed, and she was like, “You know what? Like, that’s the best thing somebody could have done for you.”

Teja (13:02):

Yeah, that’s awesome, dude. That’s really cool. So like, okay, did he like, tell you that you’re fired, like, via email, or did he actually sit you down and was like, “Hey, I told you this was gonna happen.” Like, how did that interaction go down?

Stefan (13:18):

Literally two weeks on the dot from the holiday party, like, it was after New Year’s, I think it was like, some day like, after January, I get a message from my manager, and she’s like, “Hey, can you meet me in the conference room?” I’m like, “Yeah, sure,” and there’s a woman from HR there, and so I’m like, already like, “Oh. Like, this is weird.” (Teja: Yeah.) And so then I, you know, go in there, and she’s like, “Hey, so nothing personal, but we’ve decided to terminate your position,” and I was like, “Why?” She’s like, “It came from higher ups. Like, if you have a question, feel free to go talk to Eric, the CEO,” and I was like, “Okay.” And so, like, you know, I said bye to them, and they’re like, “You need to be out today by 3:00 PM, and I was like, “Wow.”

Stefan (13:56):

Like, you know, like, “Damn, I thought we were boys,” you know <laugh>? But then I go and talk to the CEO, and he’s like, “I told you,” and I was like, “You have all this stuff on your plate, and you still remember that?” He’s like, “Yeah, because I really believe in you, and you need to go.” He’s like, “You have a very nice severance package of two months. Go figure something out, you’ll be fine,” and then he was like, “and also like, sorry about the like, you know, like, ‘you have to be out by three,’ but like, with HR and like, companies, like, stuff like that, you have to stay strict on that and stuff.” Like, so I was like, “Alright, whatever.” And we still talk to this day <laugh>.

Teja (14:24):

That’s so sick, man. Cool. Okay, so two months. Did you already have an idea for a company to start like, as this conversation happened, or did you spend that two, like, how did you come up with the idea? How did you use those two months?

Stefan (14:40):

Yeah, so I didn’t come up with the idea. Like, so what I did after those two months is like, I was like, “Okay, let me think of an idea. Like, after a month, I couldn’t come up with an idea that I really became passionate about. So I was like, you know what, and then I saw that tweet, and I was like, I wanna move to Miami, and I found a job at a startup. And so I had experience as an engineer, so I joined as employee number five as a software engineer, and this was super good learning, because I learned everything not to do in a startup. (Teja: <Laugh>.) Like, every single mistake, from the leadership to everything, was just a mistake, and so for the first year, I worked there, and at the time, I started a marketing agency, and I was just running ads for like, companies in Miami, and it was pretty cool, because like, one of them was a yachting company. 

Stefan (15:22):

So sometimes they would give me a free yacht, and another one was like, a luxury car dealership, and they would give me like, a free car every week to drive around like, so I could drive in a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, and so like, it was super cool, and like, it got my foot into business, which was like, learning about payroll, because I had two employees at the time. Then I had to learn about taxes, and I had to learn about managing QuickBooks and things like that, and it was great, but I realized quickly that it’s not a startup, because the only way it can scale is if I hire more people. And like, you know, it’s not like software where you can just reach so many people, and so I ended up working on it until I joined another job.

Stefan (15:55):

This time it was a Series B startup, and I was still an engineer, but literally the same day that I signed the paper for there, I met my co-founder on this website called Y Combinator, find a co-founder. So his name is Jens. He’s this brilliant guy from Germany, and he’s like, “Hey, like, I’m really good at tech stuff, but I need someone to do the sales and marketing. I feel like we would be a good fit,” and so he sent me over his software to take a look at and literally like, I swear this was like, a match made in heaven. I had a task at work to connect a bunch of data sources together, I used WunderGraph to do it, and I was done, like, it was a two week task, I was done in a day. So then I was like, “Okay, this has some potential,” and I was like, this is something really cool, and so I was like, okay, no problem. Let’s try it. I joined, and then within a month and a half, we got a large enterprise customer as our first customer. So then I was like, “Okay, this is something,” but we worked together, me and him, part-time on it really, it was still 40 hours for seven months before we got funding.

Teja (16:49):

So does he live in Germany, or is he in Miami too? Did he move over?

Stefan (16:54):

No, so him and my other co-founders, we’re a team of four, they’re all in Germany, and then all of our employees are across the world. We have some in Ukraine, some in Spain, some in Portugal, some in India, and then I’m the only one in America, and so it allows us to kind of cover all the time zones. So I can cover Pacific and East; they can cover Central as well as like, our customers in Japan and Australia.

Teja (17:18):

Yeah, that’s sweet. I mean, Atlassian’s a remote, or I guess a work-anywhere company at a $50 billion org. So I believe it, and our company’s remote. Like, I believe in remote first, so that’s sweet. That’s awesome, man. Do you guys do like, annual retreats? Do you guys get together often? Like, how do you guys handle that?

Stefan (17:40):

Yeah, so we actually do retreats like, every four or five months, and like, we mostly do them in Europe, because the whole team’s there, and so like, one month we did Mallorca, which was sick, and it was awesome, and then another, we did like, this mountain in Austria, because it was like, during the winter, so people were able to go skiing. Then the last one we did was in the Netherlands. Like, we got like, a farmhouse, and like, we were all together, and it was super fun, and then now we have a conference coming up, so I’m gonna go meet with my founders in Germany a little bit, and then I’m gonna go to this conference in Paris. Like, it’s super quick, and like, the cost for these things is, it outweighs everything. Like, they’re super fun.

Teja (18:15):

Oh yeah, the cost is like, the thousands, maybe up to 10, but the productivity gain, and like, after you meet, and sync, and have a couple drinks together, is like exponential, you know?

Stefan (18:27):

Yeah, exactly.

Teja (18:28):

Yeah, it’s crazy. That’s cool, man. Okay, so tell us about WunderGraph. You know, kind of, where are you guys at? You know, what’s the problem that you guys solve? You know, ’cause we use Meta Base, and that’s where all the data’s piped into for like, our BI tool. So I’m just curious to hear more about your company, and maybe we can be a customer, you know.

Stefan (18:50):

Yeah, possibly. So WunderGraph, we have two products. We have WunderGraph SDK and Wundergraph Cosmo. Both of them are open source, and WunderGraph SDK is a framework for creating backend for front ends. It allows developers to easily connect backend sources, connect to clients, everything that they need to do using this open source framework. We’ve recently kind of moved our attention towards Cosmo, because Cosmo is a full GraphQL Federation platform. So large enterprises, they usually start with a monolith, and it just gets huge, and then they wanna break it up into microservices, and the way they do that is they use GraphQL, but now they wanna be able to allow different people to work on different things at the same time and to merge things at the same time all between these microservices, and GraphQL is great for that, but Federation is even better for that, so GraphQL Federation, and so we offer a full open source federation platform.

Stefan (19:42):

So with schema checks, schema governance, schema contracts, schema composition, it just allows teams to really utilize GraphQL, and so we’ve shifted our focus towards there, and it’s still an open source product. It’s fully self hostable, which is huge for enterprises, and I mean, we launched it like, six months ago, and the reason we launched it was because people kept always coming up to us and like, “Hey, are you an alternative to Apollo?” We’re like, “No, not really,” and like, after like, 50, 60 calls of people asking that we’re like, “Okay, maybe we should put our attention towards here,” and so we did, and the things have been going a lot, lot, lot smoother <laugh>.

Teja (20:19):

That’s cool. That’s awesome. So who, like, do you guys have like, a sector focus, or are you guys kind of enabling every kind of like, style of enterprise company to have you know, this solution?

Stefan (20:34):

Yeah, so we have all sorts of industries. So like, we have a lot of NDAs though, because enterprises, like, I was joking about this the other day, we were talking to huge enterprise, and I was like, “Listen, I’m 26. I have way too much procurement experience.” Like, I wish I didn’t have this much experience. Like, I know exactly how enterprises operate. I know exactly what kind of red tape I need to get through. I know exactly which NDAs I have to sign, and so we have NDAs with like, for example, one of the biggest crypto companies in the world. They use Cosmo, and then one of the biggest companies in the world for transportation uses Cosmo, and then we have like, one of the smallest travel companies that’s doing ridiculous in revenue, but they’re a very tiny company. They also use Cosmo. So we spread across all industries from travel, to crypto, to transportation to, you know, applications like Airbnb or things like that. So there’s not really like, a focus into them, but all sorts of customers can use them, especially enterprise customers.

Teja (21:31):

That’s cool, and I mean, if we’re getting into like proprietary company strategy, like, obviously feel free to be like, you can’t disclose that, but it’s like, so if you guys have an open source model, do you guys, how do you guys like, grow the accounts generally? Like, is it implementation, things like that?

Stefan (21:52):

I talk a lot about this, because like, when you have an open source product, it’s amazing. For adoption, it’s fantastic, and our license allows us to be so easily adopted by enterprises, but the thing is, is some stuff needs to be put behind a different license or a restriction, because if you make the full thing open source, it’s really hard to monetize it. There’s different ways like, creating a cloud platform or things like that. So the way we monetize, is the full solution is open source. Some features only that enterprises would use, like, nobody else but an enterprise would use this, are behind a wall, and that comes with the same open source license, but you get access to that one. So it’s kind of an open core model. So the core of the offering is open source, but some of the stuff that you would need is behind a different model, and that’s only because we need a way to make money.

Stefan (22:40):

You know, if we open source everything, there’s not a way that we can make money. The second is we provide a hosted solution, and so this is great for like, small to medium sized companies. You know, we offer a generous tier, like, 10 million requests per month for free, (Teja: Yep.) and then after that, $10 per 1 million. So you could do 500 million, and you’re still paying a small amount, and that’s a second one. So that one’s a managed solution, and then the third one, is with these large enterprises, they need support, and so sometimes they decide to host the entire thing themselves. They use the full open source offering and WunderGraph, but we create a contract between each other for support, and so they pay, depending on which tier of support they choose, you know, they get a Slack connect, they get response time on bugs or anything like that. So those are the kind of three models that we go with, but (Teja: That’s awesome.) monetizing open source is really, really tricky.

Teja (23:27):

It’s tricky, but it’s, you know, I mean, it’s…that’s good. Like, that’s like, a moat, you know? It’s a competitive advantage, ’cause If it’s hard to replicate, you know? So that’s awesome. Okay, cool. So like, you would be pumped if like, devs in the platform when they listen to this interview, like, implement WunderGraph in what they’re doing for clients, and if like, that’s something that drives adoption. Even if it doesn’t directly contribute to revenue, it would at least like, increase platform adoption, and usage, and, you know, network effects.

Stefan (24:04):

Yeah, exactly. Like, if they can just try it out, and they use it, or they can use it for small projects, or even if they use like, our large enterprises, like, we have this huge enterprise, like, one of the biggest healthcare companies, and they’re using Cosmo, the entire open source version, and that to them is perfect. It solves all their needs, and they migrated away from a different solution that was costing them like, $400,000 a year. (Teja: <Laugh>.) So it doesn’t make us mad, because they’re still using Cosmo. Eventually, they might run into some issues or things like that, so we’ll be able to monetize, but the fact is they were able to reduce a $400,000 bill and use a better solution.

Teja (24:37):

Yeah. It’s like, there’s no limit to the scale. So how has the journey been, in terms of building the business? Like, you guys are Series A or seed? Like, where are you guys at in the company building trajectory?

Stefan (24:53):

Yeah, so we raised our funding almost about a year ago, and we’re very lean. So we have, you know, extended runway, totally doing fine, and right now, we’re climbing towards the $1 million or $1.5 million  ARR mark, and so the reason we’re doing that is before, we had all the great numbers for adoption. Like, we had the GitHub stars, we had everything, but 2023, you know, a lot of layoffs and investment money rolled up, and so our strategy right now is just get profitable, (Teja: Yep.) and get these really big customers on board, show a repeatable sales cycle, and then when we get to like $3 or $4 million ARR, like, that’s a really strong Series A, and from there, we wanna raise a really strong Series A, and then just use all that fuel to just expedite this, and we have a big competitor that we’ve been kind of chipping at, but now we’ve been really taking some large names from them. So for us, we wanna, you know, expand on that. Our strategy isn’t to take all their customers. Eventually, our strategy is always what has been from the beginning, is to create the GitHub for APIs, but this strategy allows us to get profitable, and it allows us to get customers, and it allows us to build that vision of the GitHub for APIs.

Teja (25:59):

That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean we bootstrapped the company to a couple million in revenue, and that’s the way to do it, I think, and then we ended up taking like, a small Series A, actually from a fund out in Tampa. So when you guys are ready, maybe something that, you know, we would be happy to facilitate and introduce. They’re really cool guys. (Stefan: Let’s do it.) So, cool. That’s awesome, man, and that’s super exciting. I mean, basically zero to one and a half million in ARR in like, what, like, 12, 18 months? That’s insane. That’s really cool. Sweet, man.

Stefan (26:33):

We’re not there yet. That’s the goal where we wanna go, though, so we’re slowly climbing to that goal, but with these large enterprises, like, just give us till March, April, and I think we’ll be there.

Teja (26:43):

Dude, that’s sick. That’s so crazy. That’s exciting. What’s some advice you would give to maybe another engineer or, you know, a younger version of yourself, somebody working at a tech company who’s thinking about, you know, starting their own business?

Stefan (26:57):

So with me, like, with advice, like, what I learned the hard way is like, you know, like, we met some amazing people here with like, starting this company, and like, I met so many founders, and like, the biggest thing I learned is that every company is so different. So what advice works for them probably won’t work for you, and so the only thing, and it’s so weird, like, you ever talk to a successful founder, and like, they all say the same thing, “You just gotta do it. You just gotta do it. You just gotta do it,” and then, you’re like, if you haven’t started a company, you’re like, “Well, how the hell do I just do it? Like, I don’t know where to start,” and then they’ll be like, “Oh, you just gotta start,” and it’s like, what does that mean?

Stefan (27:32):

So the answer to that question is to just increase your size of luck. Like, your surface area of luck. And how do you do that? You go and you sign up for a Y Combinator, find a co-founder, because this will let you find a co-founder, or you go into meetups around your city, and you try to find people that are like-minded, you know, that wanna start a company, or you reach out to the people that were in your school. So this increases your surface area for luck. Next, you start reading, you know, blog posts by Paul Graham or what YC is doing or things like that, and then you also start looking into what problems you see around that you would solve, but you would solve passionately, because 9 times out of 10, a lot of founders quit, because they’re just simply not passionate about it, but the one out of 10 that succeed is because they’re super passionate about it.

Stefan (28:14):

I mean, that’s the most important thing is that this is a problem that keeps you up at night, and you really wanna solve it. And I have a friend right now, he is a lawyer at like, one of the top firms in Miami. Like, the guy makes crazy money, but he has this like, weird itch that he wants to start his own company, and I told him literally the same thing, and like, six months ago, I told him literally the same thing, and he literally jumped like, he was making crazy money at this company. He literally jumped, started a startup, and then he raised a million seed round, and like, now he’s fully into it, fully passionate, and it’s like, you don’t really have to know what you’re doing, you just have to kind of start and just try, and if you hang around the right people, and you hang around the right places, some weird thing with luck will happen, and you’ll meet your co-founder through the internet, or you’ll meet them at a bar, or you know him from high school. Like, you mentioned Atlassian. The Atlassian guys went to college together, but they weren’t really friends, and then one of ’em wrote an email to like, the class of whatever and was like, “Hi, before you guys go out and enjoy corporate America, does anyone wanna start a startup with me?” And he sent it over to like, 950 people and only one guy replied, which was his founder.

Teja (29:16):

<Laugh>. That’s true?

Stefan (29:20):

They went to the same school, and like, they did group projects together, but like, they weren’t like, boys, and then he literally like, went and worked for a startup. One of ’em, I forgot which, and then he just, you know, took the email chain. He’s like, “Who wants to start a startup with me before you go to corporate America?” And like, one guy answered, and now it’s Atlassian.

Teja (29:37):

That’s so baller. What? That’s crazy, (Stefan: Yeah.) and it’s like, it’s crazy, too, that like, I mean it’s almost like you kind of get married for like, a really, like, but you have like, an objective, right? And just to be like “Alright, like, we’re like, married now, and like, we’re gonna build a business.” You just have to work out all the vision differences, values differences.

Stefan (29:58):

You’re spot on with that. Like, you basically become married to your co-founder, and like, another thing about the Atlassian guys, whenever they couldn’t come to an agreement, the last resort was Rock, Paper, Scissors. (Teja: <Laugh>.) So they would try everything that they could to solve it before they get to Rock, Paper, Scissors, because then it’s just luck.

Teja (30:13):

I kind of want to implement that. That’s amazing. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time. This was amazing. Anything that you wanna share about WunderGraph, in terms of things that are ahead for you guys?

Stefan (30:30):

Yeah, I mean, so if you’re working with GraphQL, and you’re working with Federation, and you’re working with different tools like that, you should definitely take a look at WunderGraph. I mean, it’s a fully open source offering. It’s loved by the developer community. We have an amazing Discord community with over like, a thousand members. We don’t have a name for them yet. I always joke around that they’re like, “Wunder Warriors”, but it could be whatever. And yeah, I would just recommend try it out, and if you build something with it, let me know on LinkedIn or Twitter, and then from there, I mean, the best thing is just to try it out, read the docs, and then I can always link those to you, and you can just pass them on.

Teja (31:00):

Where can people find you on LinkedIn and Twitter?

Stefan (31:03):

So I’ve become a troll on LinkedIn. I like messing around on there <laugh>. (Teja: <Laugh>.) So like, but find me on Twitter @StefanTMD, and that’s, I’m more on Twitter now, because LinkedIn’s gotten a little bit crazy now. It’s just like, I don’t even know how to explain it. Like, it’s gotten a little bit too political and too serious, and nobody has a little bit of fun in there. So I would say Twitter, go for Twitter.

Teja (31:27):

<Laugh>. Do you remember the posts…I mean, I’m still, they still happen. I’m sure they still happen, but it’s like, yeah, my LinkedIn feed is basically like, people commenting about like, I don’t know, global events. You know, like, that’s my LinkedIn. It’s like, okay. But there used to be people like, “I found this dog. The dog was…” (Stefan: <Laugh>. Oh, yeah.) you know what I mean? And then like, “I saved the dog, and the dog ended up being the company CEO that I like…<laugh>.

Stefan (31:56):

<Laugh>. No, it’s spot on. Like, it’s so weird. Like, people will post a picture like, you know, like, holding their baby and working, and they’re like, “The grind never stops,” and it’s like, dude, relax. Like, you don’t have to post it. Like, it’s fine. Like, go put your baby to sleep and then work, but like, you’re not gonna get points for holding it while you do work. I don’t even think that’s healthy.

Teja (32:14):

Oh my god, that’s so cringe, but it’s funny <laugh>. Okay. I’m gonna follow you on LinkedIn, because if you’re trolling on LinkedIn, I feel like it’d be pretty funny.

Stefan (32:29):

Yeah. You definitely…have you ever seen Analyze This or Analyze That?

Teja (32:33):

Yeah. Yes.

Stefan (32:34):

You know the car salesman scene like, where like, he’s like, “You’ve been busting my balls.” Like, you know, “You asked me all these questions,” and he just like, rips into them? (Teja: Yes.) I posted today like, “How I feel after five exploration calls with the prospect,” (Teja: <Laugh>.) and like, these people were like, “You can’t talk to prospects like that. How can you do that? That’s so rude,” and it’s like, obviously I’m trolling, but like, I can’t believe you think that’s serious. I’m like, I dunno. I post stuff like that.

Teja (32:59):

<Laugh>. Okay, I’m gonna check it out. That’s awesome. I mean, Taylor posts like, him like, lifting weights on LinkedIn, so I feel like, you know, that’s like, (THE FRONTIER THEME FADES IN) I think it’s unique to post shit that is not really seen on LinkedIn often. Like, that’s what LinkedIn needs more of, versus basically people just marketing to other people. Like, that’s what LinkedIn usually is used for, you know?

Stefan (33:25):

Sadly. Yeah, it’s literally just become like, a sales platform. It’s crazy.

Teja (33:29):

Yeah, yeah. Cool, man. Okay, well I will follow you on LinkedIn and Twitter, and I encourage everybody in the community to do the same, and check out WunderGraph.

Abbey, via previous recording (33:41):

You’re listening to the Founder to Founder podcast, powered by Gun.io’s Frontier Network. We release a new episode every Thursday morning, so be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you stream your music. Please leave us a review and share with your friends. You can follow us online at the Frontier Pod or drop us a line at [email protected] to get in touch about hiring world class tech talent.

(THE FRONTIER THEME ENDS)