Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Concordia Capital
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Concordia Capital
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Concordia Capital
Concordia Capital
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Concordia Capital
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Concordia Capital
Concordia Capital
Concordia Capital
Concordia Capital
Our investment approach harmonizes quantitative research with fundamental analysis to achieve efficacious portfolio management.
Legal Disclaimer:
The materials on this website are for illustration and discussion purposes only and do not constitute an offering to buy any interest in any investment product sponsored or managed by Concordia Capital LLC or any of its affiliates. An offering may be made only by the delivery of a confidential offering memorandum or definitive documents relating to any such product to appropriate investors.
Concordia Capital LLC has not been endorsed or recommended by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or by the securities regulatory authority of any state or non-U.S. jurisdiction.
Concordia Capital LLC has not reviewed any website that may be referenced herein and is not responsible for and does not endorse their content or policies. Concordia Capital LLC and its affiliates make no representations or warranties, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, reliability, completeness, suitability, or other characteristics of the information presented on this website, and they have no duty to update or correct any such information. Any content on this website is subject to change without notice.
This site and the information in it is not provided for distribution purposes. The information contained herein is proprietary and confidential to Concordia Capital LLC and may not be disclosed to third parties or duplicated or used for any purpose other than the purpose for which it has been provided.
The information in Concordia Capital LLC’s site and reports is not intended to contain or express exposure recommendations, guidelines. Statements made in this website and release may include forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise indicated, Performance Data is presented unaudited, and should not be relied upon as a precise reporting of gross or net performance, but rather a general indication of past performance.
Investing with Concordia Capital LLC can be speculative and involves varying degrees of risk. Concordia Capital LLC may recommend margin trading or other investing techniques that have various risk of investment loss. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
This material is not intended to represent the rendering of accounting, tax, legal or regulatory advice. A change in the facts or circumstances of any transaction could materially affect the accounting, tax, legal or regulatory treatment for that transaction. The ultimate responsibility for the decision on the appropriate application of accounting, tax, legal and regulatory treatment rests with the investor and his or her accountants, tax and regulatory counsel.
​
Check the background of our firm and investment professionals on FINRA's BrokerCheck:
Legal Disclaimer:
The materials on this website are for illustration and discussion purposes only and do not constitute an offering to buy any interest in any investment product sponsored or managed by Concordia Capital LLC or any of its affiliates. An offering may be made only by the delivery of a confidential offering memorandum or definitive documents relating to any such product to appropriate investors.
Concordia Capital LLC has not been endorsed or recommended by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or by the securities regulatory authority of any state or non-U.S. jurisdiction.
Concordia Capital LLC has not reviewed any website that may be referenced herein and is not responsible for and does not endorse their content or policies. Concordia Capital LLC and its affiliates make no representations or warranties, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, reliability, completeness, suitability, or other characteristics of the information presented on this website, and they have no duty to update or correct any such information. Any content on this website is subject to change without notice.
This site and the information in it is not provided for distribution purposes. The information contained herein is proprietary and confidential to Concordia Capital LLC and may not be disclosed to third parties or duplicated or used for any purpose other than the purpose for which it has been provided.
The information in Concordia Capital LLC’s site and reports is not intended to contain or express exposure recommendations, guidelines. Statements made in this website and release may include forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise indicated, Performance Data is presented unaudited, and should not be relied upon as a precise reporting of gross or net performance, but rather a general indication of past performance.
Investing with Concordia Capital LLC can be speculative and involves varying degrees of risk. Concordia Capital LLC may recommend margin trading or other investing techniques that have various risk of investment loss. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
This material is not intended to represent the rendering of accounting, tax, legal or regulatory advice. A change in the facts or circumstances of any transaction could materially affect the accounting, tax, legal or regulatory treatment for that transaction. The ultimate responsibility for the decision on the appropriate application of accounting, tax, legal and regulatory treatment rests with the investor and his or her accountants, tax and regulatory counsel.
​
Check the background of our firm and investment professionals on FINRA's BrokerCheck:
RETURNS: January 31st, 2021 - February 28, 2021
Median account performance: +2.25%
Range: [+1.19% - +2.84%]
S&P 500: +2.61%
Disclaimer: Concordia Capital caters to clients with diverse risk tolerances. For a more meaningful interpretation of returns, please refer to your monthly account performance email.
RETURNS: January 31st, 2021 - February 28, 2021
Median account performance: +2.25%
Range: [+1.19% - +2.84%]
S&P 500: +2.61%
Disclaimer: Concordia Capital caters to clients with diverse risk tolerances. For a more meaningful interpretation of returns, please refer to your monthly account performance email.
RETURNS: January 31st, 2021 - February 28, 2021
Median account performance: +2.25%
Range: [+1.19% - +2.84%]
S&P 500: +2.61%
Disclaimer: Concordia Capital caters to clients with diverse risk tolerances. For a more meaningful interpretation of returns, please refer to your monthly account performance email.
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INSIGHT
Bootstrapped Stories
In the earlier years, our firm focused primarily on supporting venture-backed businesses endeavoring to raise subsequent financing rounds. While this boded well in 2021 and 2022, as the market turned our team identified the need to pivot to capital-efficient and profitable companies. We pivoted our efforts to identifying bootstrapped companies: ones with little or no outside capital raised. These businesses were far more likely to be profitable and usually had very strong unit economics. The real challenge was finding them at the inflection point where they were looking to take on capital. The math for these founders is usually simple: will the cash and guidance provided by investors propel the business enough to offset the dilution incurred. For example, owning 60% of a $40 million ARR SaaS business is usually a better outcome than owning 100% of a $15 million ARR SaaS business. That said, it doesn’t always make sense, and our team has seen countless stories of raises and partnerships that don’t bring the level of accretion initially postulated. Furthermore, there are an array of companies that have reached impressive scale without raising outside capital. Below we chronicle three of them.
MailChimp
One of the greatest bootstrap stories is MailChimp's evolution into a leading email marketing platform. From its inception as a side project started by Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius in 2001, the company quickly carved out a niche by providing an email marketing solution for small businesses, reaching $1 million in ARR. This early phase was marked by a bootstrapped model, leveraging profits from the founders' web design agency and building around a freemium model to attract a wide user base. This approach helped establish a solid foundation, with the freemium model encouraging both initial use and gradual customer upgrades.
As MailChimp grew from $1 million to $10 million in ARR, it continued to reinvest earnings into product development and customer engagement. The company expanded its features based on customer feedback and invested in content marketing, building a loyal customer base. This period of growth was characterized by the freemium model's success and impact, driving user acquisition and retention through valuable, no-cost services alongside premium upgrades.
Navigating from $10 million to $100 million in ARR, MailChimp adopted a more aggressive growth strategy, including strategic acquisitions like TinyLetter in 2011, financed through its own revenue. This acquisition broadened MailChimp's appeal by adding a tool designed for simple, personal newsletters, complementing its existing services. Throughout this phase, MailChimp continued to innovate and diversify its offerings, demonstrating a scalable, user-centered approach to growth that maintained its original bootstrapped, self-funded ethos. Mailchimp never received external funding before being acquired by Intuit for $12 billion in cash and stock. Mailchimp has become an icon amongst bootstrap companies with many companies trying to replicate its success and proliferation.
Craigslist
Craigslist’s inception and slow but steady rise in growth is from a very simple philosophy of “customer-focused” services, rather than focusing on immediate profits. Craigslist started initially as an email list in the San Francisco Bay Area back in 1995 as a simple email list. It was focused around software engineers in the area and postings generally were for social events for gatherings. As Craigslist grew, sections such as job postings allowed it to expand and it eventually became a webpage for online postings. Because Craigslist started as a pet project, there was little funds required to run the operation, as web pages were kept simple. This is a theme that still translates to present-day.
As the demand for Craigslist began to expand, the offerings expanded as well, with Craigslist charging a small fee for its job postings section. However, it was careful not to grow too much too quickly, as the team made sure that their first priority was the practicality and the usefulness of the site was maintained. By charging a small fee for these ad postings, however, Craigslist was able to hire its first employees and become a functioning company. Without competition and keeping their simplicity, Craigslist had little need to run ads on the website or update its technology while still growing due to the demand for a cheap method of ad postings. For the majority of users, Craigslist was still free, which allowed it to attract more and more users during this period of time.
By the time Craigslist reached $10 million+ ARR in 2004, it received attention from larger companies, specifically eBay, who purchased a 25% stake in the company after it was referred to by a former employee of Craigslist. However, this did not change their initial mission in having it remain as non-commercial as possible, as they kept to their original promise of not running banner ads on their website or having increased fees. The only difference, however, is that while keeping costs the same with the same basic features, Craigslist was able to expand from $10M ARR to over $100M ARR in just three years by the time 2007 came around. The combination of being the sole player filling a much needed hole and keeping to their non-commercial ideology since the beginning has allowed Craigslist to grow their user base organically and has encouraged them to remain loyal, a story rather difficult to replicate today with the focus on short-term gains.
Aha!
Aha!'s initial growth from $0 to $1 million in ARR in the absence of outside capital was due to a strong understanding of its target market and a commitment to solving real problems for product managers. The founders, leveraging their previous experience in product management and software development, identified a gap in the market for comprehensive, user-friendly product roadmap software. By focusing on customer feedback and adopting a lean startup methodology, Aha! developed a minimum viable product that directly addressed the needs of its target audience. Upon reaching the $1 million ARR milestone, Aha! focused on scaling its operations while maintaining capital efficiency. They achieved this by investing heavily in automation and streamlining internal processes, which allowed for rapid scaling without the need for proportional increases in staff or resources. This period of growth was characterized by a bootstrapped approach to financing, as well as reinvesting profits to fuel expansion. As Aha! crossed the $10 million ARR threshold, their team began looking for opportunities to accelerate growth through strategic acquisitions. Instead of raising outside capital, Aha! leveraged its strong cash flow and profitability to finance these acquisitions. Aha! also expanded its focus beyond product managers to serve a wider range of roles within organizations, including marketing and strategy teams, significantly enlarging its total addressable market.
A common trend across all three of these bootstrapped companies was their experienced founders, freemium business model, and scrappy management teams.
NEWS/ INSIGHTS
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