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Home Podcast Case Study – From Lawyer to Multi-Million Dollar Tech Entrepreneur

Case Study – From Lawyer to Multi-Million Dollar Tech Entrepreneur

Nick Fogle

Venture Capital | Entrepreneur

Changing career tracks can be challenging, but it can also be exciting and lucrative. Going from economics grad to lawyer to tech entrepreneur, Nick Fogle, founder of SaaS start-up Wavve, a tool for podcasters to turn audio into video, has gotten the start-up itch and learned how to bootstrap his way through several career iterations. Nick shares the lessons he learned from teaching himself to code through the multi-million dollar acquisition of Wavve in 2021 and into his second start-up, Churnkey.

Guest Profile

Nick Fogle, the founder of Wavve and Churnkey, went from being an attorney drowning in student loan debt to teaching himself to code, building a successful SaaS (software as a service) business, and ultimately getting acquired for a mid-7 figure sum in 2021. He graduated with a degree in economics in the deep recession of 2008 and decided to weather the storm by taking out student loans and going to law school. When that didn’t meet his financial needs, and he was desperate to get out from under the mountain of debt, he decided to start his own company. He couldn’t find a technical co-founder to help with his startup idea, so he worked at minimum wage jobs while teaching himself to code, then worked his way up the ranks from lowly intern to lead engineer at a publicly traded software company.

After working hard for five years, Nick was finally able to pay off his student loan debt and left his day job in 2020. Nick sold Wavve for a mid-7-figure sum in 2021, taking everything they’d learned about retention and turning it into a new business, Churnkey.

Company: Churnkey
Location: Charleston, South Carolina
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/nickfogle
Website: www.churnkey.co

Topics Covered

When did it all start for Nick Fogle to get into entrepreneurship and tech startup? [1:26]
How difficult is it to learn to code? [9:30]
Advice to non-tech founders who have start-up ideas in tech spaces. [11:20]
What were the biggest lessons learned from start-up to exit? [14:00]
Deciding to take the first offer or double down. [16:30]
What is the significance of churn in a tech company? [20:20]
When to embrace the idea of “leaning into” your business. [25:55]
What was the iterative agile approach applied to Wavve? [29:15]
What were the deciding factors in selling Wavve? [50:06]
How did the learnings from selling Wavve affect Churnkey? [52:27]
What is it like running a B2B business? [55:40]

Learn More

Resources Mentioned

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

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