Growing From $300K to $26M Without a VP of Sales | Ross Paquette, Maropost

Ross Paquette built Maropost into a global commerce and marketing platform over 13 years. No venture capital. No VP of Sales for longer than most founders would be comfortable admitting.In this episode, Ross breaks down exactly how he built a revenue engine from scratch when he had no choice but to own it himself. He talks about the $30M ceiling he hit as a founder, the $8M in failed expansion attempts across Toronto and Chicago, and why most bootstrap founders make the same hiring mistakes over and over.This is not a highlight reel. It is a real conversation about what it actually takes to go from startup to scale when you are running lean and every wrong hire sets you back months.What you will hear in this episode:Why founder-led sales drove explosive growth from $300K to $26M in under 30 months. The real cost of hiring before your system is ready. How Ross finally figured out his own ceiling as a founder and what he did about it. The shift from startup dictator to scale-up CEO and why that transition is harder than it sounds. Why he stopped selling candidates on the company and started filtering for the ones who could actually handle the reality. Three things every founder should do before posting that VP-level job.If you are building a bootstrap business and trying to figure out how to grow revenue without unlimited runway, this episode was made for you.Ross Paquette is the founder and CEO of Maropost. Find him on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossandrew1/ - or at maropost.com.The Revenue Problem Solvers Podcast is hosted by Karl Ortmanns. New episodes drop weekly for founders, revenue leaders, and operators who are serious about building.Sponsored by Virtual Causeway. Learn more at virtualcauseway.com.#RevenueProblemSolversPodcastEntrepreneurship, Sales, Business, SaaS, Marketing, Startups, Leadership, Management