Summary: Kyle Racki is the founder and CEO of Proposify, a software-as-a-service company currently doing seven figures in annual recurring revenue. Proposify allows companies to make better proposals faster to win more business. When Kyle launched Proposify in 2013, he and his co-founders almost gave up in their first year but despite enormous challenges, they now have 2,500 paying customers. He dedicates most of his time to product design, management and customer support, and doing his best to make Proposify all that it can be.<br> <br> He has been an entrepreneur for over 10 years and has lived with hustle, tenacity and resilience. He shares what he has learnt and what he continues to learn every day because he wants to help other entrepreneurs succeed. He does that through his blogs, videos, speaking and his upcoming book on building a SaaS business.<br> <br> Period in full-time business<br> <br> At age 24, he became a freelancer and a while later started a small web design agency with a guy he had met in the agency world. They ran the business for 5 years before starting Proposify which has been in operations for the last 3 years. They sold the agency in 2014 and also raised a seed round of funding for Proposify.<br> <br> The Journey<br> <br> He never thought he would be an entrepreneur and was in fact terrified of it.<br> <br> Core revenue streams<br> <br> Proposify is a software-as-a-service business. People sign up for a free trial of their proposal software and later they can opt for different pricing plans based on how many proposals one writes. Each pricing plan also has a range of features. So far they have 5,000 paid accounts and retention is very good.<br> <br> Starting out in business<br> <br> Kyle says everything he has done so far in business was not planned. He was freelancing in 2008, doing web design and development, but he got lonely and decided to get a business partner. Together they started their agency.<br> <br> Getting the first set of clients for the agency<br> <br> His business partner already had a few clients but they struggled a lot in trying to get clients. They did well in the first year, maintained low overheads and they got several good projects. They also struggled with their growth after the first year because they couldn’t effectively manage the volatility of the business.<br> <br> Core agency products<br> <br> Kyle says that social media and digital marketing were there but very new. They used to do a lot of web design, UX work and online marketing. One of the problems they noted with the agency is that they didn’t have a speciality. They never focused on a niche so they were stuck competing with local companies for smaller contracts.<br> <br> Tip: When starting a service business especially a creative one, you need to specialise in one thing.<br> <br> Starting Proposify<br> <br> When he was employed and freelancing, he used to write proposals and as he was freelancing he came up with the idea for a SaaS product for proposal management. He didn’t have any coding skills but created its wireframe and shelved it for several years.<br> <br> In the process of running their agency, they started getting tired of chasing clients for payments among other issues. They really desired to transition into a SaaS business and tried out different SaaS products which didn’t work. That’s when they started discussing the proposal SaaS idea and they decided to go into it.<br> <br> Developing a SaaS product<br> <br> Kyle was not skilled in building a SaaS product but he knew how to create the interface. As they were developing different SaaS products, they built a team of developers internally. They got a grant to hire a developer who worked on the Proposify idea for one year. The developer is now the CTO.<br> <br> They got the grant from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) after they p...
