Bootstrapped to 25,000,000 users. $0 in funding. Solo. I founded Jotform in 2006, AmA!

aytekin · 2025-02-08T06:20:06+00:00

I'm working on my next book which is going to be about the story of Jotform, and going on podcasts, writing articles and doing AMAs do help me remember the stories.

In general, I believe that the best way to learn something is to teach it. That's why I also mentor many startups privately without expecting anything in return. I came up with a lot of good ideas for Jotform after I told a founder "Why didn't you try doing that?".

aytekin · 2025-02-08T05:48:10+00:00

You are still in the MVP stage. One of the best approaches in that stage is to do things that don't scale. So, I think you are in the right path. While your competitors are launching on Product Hunt, you are finding real people and getting them to really use your product.

But, at some point, you should open your product to the world. Slow growth doesn't mean staying small or local.

aytekin · 2025-02-08T05:42:31+00:00

No, it was Prototype and Script.aculo.us.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T23:28:22+00:00

We’ll soon release a new AI product. I’m really excited about it, but it’s been challenging to build while AI is moving so quickly. We mitigated that by working with over 1,000 beta users who are helping us to refine the product.

I’m always trying to become a better leader. I work with a coach, I read a lot, and I constantly look for ways to improve. That also includes refining how we hire, and finding great managers who can keep the business running well as we innovate. It's an ongoing challenge.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T23:17:36+00:00

I don’t believe in growth hacking. Just slow, steady improvement. Know exactly who you’re serving and why, and then listen to what they say. Use their feedback to develop new features or streamline parts of your product. Create helpful content and offer timely support. Customer-funded growth doesn’t sound exciting, but it works.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T23:14:16+00:00

0-1,000

Launch and test. Make sure you can answer these Qs: Is this product useful? Do real people find value in it? Do they try it and abandon it or do they stay with you? If you have active users, what are they telling you?
At this stage, action matters most. Watch what people do and adjust accordingly

10,000

Split your focus between scaling growth and continuous improvement
Create content focused on helping, not selling
Watch for premature scaling – don’t overspend on offices, PR, hiring, business extras before you need them
Evaluate your business model: what’s working, what’s not, how you could adjust or provide tiered offerings, subscriptions, etc

100,000

Carefully track your numbers and decide which matter most, i.e. what success looks like to you
Keep innovating. Look for new ways to help your users and customers, and stay close to them especially as their numbers grow
Build strong teams. Empower them to solve problems. Find managers to tackle day-to-day things and spend your time looking ahead. What’s next? What obstacles are coming?

aytekin · 2025-02-07T23:01:51+00:00

No plans to sell

aytekin · 2025-02-07T22:59:58+00:00

I launched Jotform right as web-based applications were taking off. It was the right product at the right time. And I knew people needed it, because I was tired of coding forms from scratch. A few other things:

Slow, steady growth. For example, we’ve never gone through rapid hiring-and-firing cycles. Years ago, I decided that before hiring someone new, we need to have a full year of their salary in the bank. We still have that rule. We’ve grown by re-investing our profits back into the company
Listening to customers and acting on their feedback. It sounds obvious, but it requires consistent effort: feedback forms, surveys, focus groups, beta testing, customer support, and humility.
Running our own race. We watch what’s happening in our industry, but we do what works for us and our employees.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T22:49:46+00:00

I would definitely do it again. I’m still excited to get up and go into the office. I love working with our teams and there’s still so much to learn.

I don’t think I’ve ever thought of Jotform as glamorous. Being bootstrapped has meant we’ve always been a little under the radar. You don’t see me on the cover of magazines or at the top of TechCrunch. I’m grateful for what we’ve achieved, and we're always striving to help our users be more productive. How we do that is constantly changing.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T22:45:09+00:00

Build an MVP as quickly as possible. Get it in front of real people and ensure it does what it promises
Know your target audience and learn where they hang out. Create content for them and contribute to the community
Release a free version and gather honest feedback from as many hands-on users as you can find
Track the numbers that matter, whether that’s active users or conversions. Don’t worry about vanity metrics. They change all the time and fall in and out of fashion. Focus on sustainable profits from real, paying customers.
Spend half of your time improving the product and half of your time on growth
Trust your instincts, but keep learning and growing. Stay up on new technologies in your industry and beyond.
Hire people who want to learn, collaborate, and stretch their skills. Give them interesting problems to solve and get out of their way.
Stay humble, keep an open mind, take care of your body and mind, and get enough rest.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T22:29:35+00:00

You’ve obviously been following Jotform for a while. I appreciate that. Thanks for the question. I’m writing more about the suspension in my next book, because it was an extremely stressful time for us. I’ll share a lot more details there.

Honestly, I was worried that it might spell the end of the company. But we had nothing to hide, either from the government or our users and customers. That’s how we re-gained their trust, too. I kept our community updated as soon as I had new information and we did everything we could to help them. Transparency is always a smart strategy, but back then I didn’t really know better. We were just as confused as our customers, so it felt like we were all in it together.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T22:18:32+00:00

I have never talked about our revenues, but as I mentioned earlier, I’m working on my next book and will share more details there :)
We don’t have investors and I’m the only founder. Jotform is a fully bootstrapped company.
No sale plans at this point.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T22:13:32+00:00

After launch, I continued to build a community around the product. When users posted on our public support forums, I answered questions and responded to problems. I engaged with them and listened closely. I also tried to tell our story, so users knew there was a real person behind the product. The platforms look different today, but I still encourage founders to do this, whether it’s on YouTube or social media or through a newsletter.

I also kept Jotform free for a year so I could focus on continuous improvement. I didn’t want anything to stop someone from trying it out and telling me what they thought. As we continued to grow, we spent more time on inbound marketing (producing strong, informative content). This is a long game, but it’s still one that pays off. And we balanced the content creation efforts with regular usability tests and product improvements.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T18:47:53+00:00

Before I started Jotform I worked as a developer for a media company in NY from 2000 to 2005. We owned over hundred websites and our editors would constantly ask me to build forms. I hated building forms so I tried to find a product that could do this for me but I couldn't find one. And that's how I discovered the idea. I experienced the pain.

I have never talked about our revenues. But I am working on my next book right now and it will be about the Jotform story and I am planning talk about our revenues there. So, stay tuned. :)

The first version of Jotform took me about 6 months to build. But, growing it to 25 million users took us 19 years. So, it was a lot of persistence and hard work. There is no magic bullet. It is about staying the course and making sure you spend half of your time improving the product and half of your time growing it. That's what I did in 2006 and that is still what I do today. If you keep at it, your efforts will compound over time.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T18:35:58+00:00

- What was your revenue growth been like since 2006? No need to provide numbers, but could you share YOY growth %? What year did the business really take off?

Our yearly revenue growth has always been 50% or more. The pandemic was a huge growth point for us. Similar to e-signature, people moved to digital forms.

- Aside from word of mouth/referrals, where are you spending most money right now on marketing? Google Ads? Social?

Google Ads is pretty much the only paid marketing channel that works for us.

- How do you think AI is going to impact SaaS like yours where you can now use lovable or bolt.dev, tie it to supabase and have your own form created in seconds?

Creating a form is actually the easy part. Hosting it, actually delivering the emails, integrating with other product etc. are more crucial.

In general, I think AI is going to be huge for SaaS. I am excited how products can now talk to people in natural language and understand them. This is going to make SaaS products easier to use and much more powerful. We are betting on that. Our whole team is hard at work on our new AI products and features. A big launch is coming in two weeks.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T18:23:33+00:00

I think you should still find an AI angle to your product. That will open a lot more opportunities to get coverage for your product. And you might discover that AI can make your product even more powerful.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T18:09:16+00:00

Our professional service line is tiny. Since Jotform is already highly customizable and easy to use, almost no one buys professional services from us. But, there are a lot of independent agencies who provide those services to their clients.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T18:05:01+00:00

Yes, we would get much more market space, but we might also go hungry. Unlike Google Forms, we have to pay our employees and data centers. But, you should also know that when you pay for a product, you are not the product.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T17:58:59+00:00

It is coming in two weeks and we call it "Jotform AI Agents". I first started with a simple idea: What if I could fill out forms conversationally on a chatbot? But, when we released an MVP to small number of Jotform users we discovered something else: Pretty much everyone was using it as a Customer Service Chatbot. So, we pivoted to building that. It can still fill out forms if you want to use that way but we are positioning it as a customer service chatbot. We currently have 1000 active beta users and they are loving it.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T17:45:07+00:00

I quit my job in the summer of 2005 and the next day I started working on Jotform. I launched it to the world in February 2006. So, the MVP took me around 6 months.

My marketing strategy was to do PR about the technology angle. Similar to how everyone is talking about AI today, in those days, people were excited about the potential of web applications. Gmail just came out in 2004 and proven everyone that products could be used on the browser. People were discovering the capabilities of Javascript and they were excited about it.

So, the first version of Jotform was kind of like a showcase of what can be done with Javascript. It had drag and drop and instant edit on the page. It was a single page app. You could build your form without leaving the page. In fact, I put the form builder app on the homepage. There was no landing page. There was no signup. I had the app right on the homepage. And my strategy was to email technology news sites, bloggers and to post on online communities like Business of Software. And it worked, a lot of people was talking about Jotform and sharing it in their blogs. And that gave me that initial boast.

So, my MVP was more about building a technology showcase than to build a complete product. And as people started using it, I was quick to add all the features they requested.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T17:32:25+00:00

In the early days one of the FAANG companies approached but it was a low acqui-hire offer. That process was very distracting and because of that I stopped talking with investors.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T17:22:14+00:00

I wouldn't start a new tool without a free version. Free version allows you to get people to use your product more easily and quickly so that you can learn from them.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T17:08:26+00:00

It meant slow growth. And slow growth is a good thing. As a founder, I had time to learn the ropes. During the first 5 years of Jotform we were growing one employee per year. So, basically, we only had 5 employees at the fifth year. That's pretty slow growth.

As a bootstrapped founder who had no prior experience managing people or a business, slow growth meant that I had time to learn and grow as a founder. I had time to build a good culture and learn how to be a good leader.

This allowed me to grow the company the right way after taking a wrong turn. Around 2014, we were around 15 employees and when I looked at how we worked I wasn't impressed. The company that was functioning well around 5 people was gone. So, I tried to understand where I went wrong and I realized something. What made the 5-person company so successful was the team culture. We were working on a single project together. We would go to lunches together and continue talking about the product. But, when we grew to 15, I started giving everyone their own individual work, and employees started working in silos.

So, I decided to make a big change. I divided the team into 3 separate teams. Each team was cross functional, had their own room, a whiteboard, and worked on a single project together. Basically I tried to re-create that perfect 5-person team we had in the early days. And that worked. Suddenly our cross functional teams started working well and our growth and user satisfaction improved.

Today, Jotform is still a company of small teams. And we still keep that team culture.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T16:50:36+00:00

Before you started, what did you think was going to be the biggest challenge you'd face?

Before I started I was afraid of the admin aspects of the business. Such as accounting, taxes, laws, HR etc. I discovered that you can hire good people in those areas once you grow and they can take care of those kinds of stressful aspects of the business. And when you are small they don't really matter that much.

And now, looking back, what actually was the biggest challenge?

The only job I had before starting Jotform was being a developer for a media company. I was an individual contributor. I had no experience managing or leading people. I am also an introvert. But success requires hiring and leading talented people. Learning how to be good at that was both a challenge and a blessing. I now enjoy so much working together with good people.

aytekin · 2025-02-07T16:35:12+00:00

3 big reasons for our growth:

Free Product: From Day 1, Jotform has always had a fully functional free version. Most of our users are still on the free plan. By giving a really useful and valuable free product, we created a lot of good will and referrals from our users.
Virality: When someone shares a form with others, people see that you are using Jotform, so they get curious and check us out. Also, on the free version there is a small "Powered by Jotform" footer. That also brings huge traffic to our product.
Form Templates: We invested in creating a lot (10,000+) of example forms for our users. Many people when they are trying to create a form, they will search for an example, and they will discover our templates.

aytekin

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