#70: Bootstrapped to $3M and Raised a VC Round Before a $200M PE Transaction – Jafar Owainati

Jafar Owainati was a mechanical engineer before he got an MBA in entrepreneurship and decided to start a software company with two friends. They looked at many ideas before building software to help sales engineers respond to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) faster and easier. They launched Loopio in 2014 and had paying customers within one year.  The three founders built the software and sold the first customers before adding more employees as they approached $1M ARR. They kept growing faster with a disciplined and frugal approach to $3M ARR before raising a round of VC funding from OpenView Ventures, a practical investor that aligned with the vision and approach of Loopio’s founders.  Loopio now has hundreds of employees and Sumeru Equity Partners made a strategic $200 million private equity investment in 2021. Jafar left to start a compensation management software company called Barley which is starting to grow quickly now.   Learn more at practicalfounders.com.