Comments on: How One Entrepreneur Escaped a Cult and Built a 7-Figure Business

By: Jody Aveline

Jody Aveline — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 23:39:34 +0000

Nice, I love it when I hear success stories attached to people like us. I am truly happy for you Kyle! I was born into being a JW, left “the truth” when I was 15. My entire life I have built up, – got educated, bought lots of stuff, travelled, had tons of cash and materialistic possessions and torn down, – been homeless, living day by day, dark thoughts, etc.. I guess I had that “don’t invest in a dying system of things” propaganda in my head and heard it every 1, 5, 10, 20 yrs. or so the never knowing when it’s gonna happen “repetitive cycle”. Anyway, I read your article, I found it by chance and I wanted to tell you about a FB group out there for ex JW’s. Someone sent me the group invite a while back and I checked it out, great place to feel understood whence growing up in a cult/sect. I am not affiliated to the group other than, being a member for about a year now. The group is called Empowered ex- Jehovah’s Witnesses (Empowered Minds). I left in 86-87, I was not baptized so I was never DF’ed but back then the elders called us Disassociated and no one could talk to us.

By: Marco

Marco — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 00:30:02 +0000

Hi Kyle, I really love your story.

I hope one day build a saas product and your story is very inspirational.

I just have one question that always confuses and scares me.

When did you start to charge for your product?
Did you start to charge immediately after the release of your MVP?
In your opinion when is it the right time to start charging?

Again, thank you for sharing your story.

By: Sasha Kovaliov aka nlupus

Sasha Kovaliov aka nlupus — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 20:40:52 +0000

That’s an amazing story Kyle! I used to work on building your competitors (Quote Roller and Pandadoc) during those times and I can say that you nailed it!
Good luck! Hope we are going to read another interview with $500K MRR next year.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 16:46:19 +0000

Hi Kyle,

This article was massively inspirational to me! Thank you for putting out an honest and transparent piece. As a designer building my own business the quote that really resonated with me is: “You often hear the difference between success and failure is a matter of who gives up first.” Building a business can be hard and some days discouraging but there is tremendous power in perseverance and putting in the work – everyday. So thank you again for doing this interview. God bless you!

By: Hector Miramontes

Hector Miramontes — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 19:04:24 +0000

Hi Kyle, what is the best advice you can give on taking the many founder/CEO hats away?

By: Roger Rowles

Roger Rowles — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 07:12:23 +0000

Wow, that’s a helluva story. Thanks for being so transparent and genuine, and thanks for sticking it out. Truly inspiring!

By: Mart Shark

Mart Shark — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 09:39:41 +0000

Now that you’ve found product-market fit and are growing nicely, are you going to ditch that horrid .biz domain name?! 🙂

I always find it hard to take a business located on .biz seriously.

By: tkobaid

tkobaid — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 20:55:55 +0000

Kyle, thanks for the article and congratulations on making Proposify a success. I’d like to ask you how difficult it was to convert customers used to traditional tools like MS Word and justify to them the investment in a better tool. Was there a lot of resistance? Was the selling process hard?

By: mazharoddin

mazharoddin — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 17:51:36 +0000

Really Inspiring story, it looks long and tough journey. One request I have, if possible pls do share approx development cost.
I got that initially you and Jonathon developed the product, but later how many ppl worked and what was the development cost. Thanks.

By: Greg Trimble

Greg Trimble — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 14:58:19 +0000

Hey Kyle –

Cool story man. Glad you stuck it out. 🙂

I had a question that has nagged at me for years. Once a company has a decent product and found their target market, what do you do to go from that big flat line for 18 months in MRR to that quick increase in MRR a few months later as a virtual unknown in a sea of SAAS companies.

I read the part on the “Key to Marketing Success” above, but what was it really that generated that initial base of users to increase MRR? A blog? But if a blog, how did you get people to read it? Facebook? Twitter? Strictly SEO? Press?

My question may seem lame but if someone could identify what it is that a startup can do between $0 – $5000 MRR to gain a little visibility…and then write a book about it, they’d be rich!

Anyway, thanks for the read. Great info.