They spent four years with under $1M ARR before the breakthrough. How many of us would keep going that long?
Their original 7 employees, including Alex, stayed together the entire time.
Having tried to build a product myself, I know how hard retention is. Some of these people were probably making minimum wage. Holding a team together through four years of near-zero traction, saying no to every temptation elsewhere, before any sign it would work, is by itself an unbelievable feat.
The $40M ARR story gets all the attention, but I think the real story is those four quiet years before it.