#46 – Founding couple creates valuable company, big exit, and family life too

Joshua Strebel started a small SEO and website agency in the early 2000s after graduating from university. Joshua and his wife Sally experimented with website hosting using WordPress with low monthly fees while they ran their services business in Scottsdale, Arizona. WordPress became popular and eventually Pagely was formally launched as the first managed WordPress hosting platform in 2009 and they closed their services. business. Pagely grew steadily until 2013, when dozens of inexpensive managed WordPress hosting competitors entered the market, all backed by big VC funding. Pagely was bootstrapped with no outside funding, so they slowly changed their focus to serve only the biggest companies the largest WordPress sites with the most complex needs. Pagely revenues grew 1000% in just 3 years after focusing on the top 1% of WordPress customers. Pagely was profitable and sustainable with many big-brand large customers when they sold the company in 2021 to GoDaddy, the huge website hosting company also based in Arizona. With nearly $10 million in ARR, Pagely’s strategic exit created generational wealth for Joshua and Sally and life-changing wealth for multiple key employees. Learn more at practicalfounders.com.,