Back in 2020, when the COVID-19 was at a high peak. Humanity struggled with something that was never predicted before.
It was an eye-opener for entrepreneurs, business owners, our favorite gems around the WordPress community even for everyone, and had to struggle for a way out. We thought to motivate and empower our fellow WordPressers’. And, that’s how WPfounders came into existence.
This May, a remarkable milestone of a year has completed. We have published 50 stories so far despite knowing that founders always have a busy schedule.
Not only this, we are more than happy to present another venture: WPdiscounts.io, where WordPressers can find exclusive discounts. If you work for a WordPress business, we would encourage you to submit a discount to get listed before your competitors.
We are thankful to all the founders who shared their success stories that helped us for a cause to motivate young WordPress entrepreneurs & communities and also proud to be one of the media partners for the WordPress Agency Summit by Atarim.
We are also thankful to our friends at Rocket.net and Astra for their support since day one.
Reading an entire story might take a bit more of your time, so we compiled one piece of advice from each story to showcase in a single post.
- Nicolas Lecocq of OceanWP
- Trey Gardner of GreenGeeks
- Robert Abela of WP White Security
- Istiak Rayhan of WPLeaders
- Davinder Singh of Smart Web Creators
- James Rose of Content Snare
- Gijo Varghese of WP Speed Matters
- Dusty Davidson of Flywheel
- Yoni Luksenberg of Elementor
- Tom Fanelli of Convesio
- Maddy Osman of The-Blogsmith
- Oliver Sild of WebArx
- Benjamin Denis of SEOPress
- Alex Panagis of ScaleMath
- Jan Koch of WP Mastery
- Adrian Spiac of TranslatePress
- Bridget Willard, WordPress consultant
- Jason Resnick of NurtureKit
- Anthony Gordon of WooSignal
- Jean Baptiste of WP Rocket
- Nando Pappalardo of YITH
- Mario Peshev of DevriX
- Johnny Nguyen of WPJohnny & JohnnyVPS
- Michael Makijenko of Visual Composer
- Hans & Donata of Termageddon
- Bryan Muthig of A2 Hosting
- Brian Jackson of Perfmatters & Forgemedia
- Ivica Delic of Freelancers Tools
- Frank Goossens of Optimizing Matters
- Matt Connor of SSD Nodes
- Natalie MacLees of Simply Schedule Appointments
- Shikhil Sharma of Astra Security
- Nazim Ansari of iPage Solution
- Oliver Martin of NO LABEL Studios
- Joe Casabona of How I Built It
- Ben Gabler of Rocket.net
- Vito Peleg of Atarim (WP FeedBack)
- Shay Toder, Page Speed Optimization Expert
- Dave Swift of Profitable Tools
- Sonal Sinha of SKT Themes
- Adrian Tobey of Groundhogg
- Munir Kamal of Editor Plus
- Anh Tran of Meta Box
- Sebastiaan van der Lans of WordProof
- Jarrett Gucci of WP Fix It
- Baris Unver of Optimocha
- Ed Ellingham of Cloud Nine Web Design
- Mark Zahra of RebelCode
- Chris Badgett of LifterLMS
- Michelle Frechette of WPCoffeeTalk
The one piece of advice I would like to give to anyone who wants to start their own business is to always listen to your customers. They use your product in different ways that you probably don’t know about and when they like it, they give you useful feedback and ideas to improve it.
Nicolas Lecocq – Founder of OceanWP
The best advice I can give is to find a niche that you know well and own it. You will increase your chances of being successful and enjoy what you do for as long as you’re doing it.
Trey Gardner – Founder of GreenGeeks
The reality is that you need to put in the long hours of hard work, be focused, be patient, and ready to take some risks. Business is a marathon and not a sprint. If you are in it for an overnight success, or just for the money, you’re in the wrong place.
Robert Abela – Founder of WP White Security
If you want to start your own business, do it in your own way. Just because someone is doing great at something, there is no guarantee that it will work for you too.
Istiak Rayhan – Founder of WPLeaders
Just because there is a popular plugin that does something specific, it should not stop you from creating something similar. You might end up creating something even better and become the next leader in that field.
Davinder Singh – Founder of Smart Web Creators
Confidence tends to come through experience – and the only way to get that is to keep trying new things and pushing yourself to come out of your comfort zone. Over time your confidence grows which in turn makes it easier to get clients and charge more.
James Rose – Founder of Content Snare
Focus on a niche, Build a community, and Love what you do – One thing that I noticed in all my products/business is that whenever I built something that I was really passionate about, it went on to succeed.
Gijo Varghese – Founder of WP Speed Matters
To other young entrepreneurs, don’t be afraid to hustle and do the hard work in the early days! It’s easy to look at Flywheel and not understand all the long nights it took to build the company we are today.
Dusty Davidson – Co-founder of Flywheel
Success doesn’t lay in a particular market or a product. Success will come at your doorstep if you solve a real pain the user is experiencing, and persist in solving more pains, and staying in communication with your potential customers.
Yoni Luksenberg – Co-founder of Elementor
My advice to startups—and especially WordPress startups—is INNOVATE. It is a great time to be in the WordPress market—probably the best in history, actually—and we are on the eve of some really big things happening.
Tom Fanelli – Founder of Convesio
Don’t build something without validating your idea. And don’t rely on friends and family who love you to give you unbiased advice that will help you grow! It’s better to work with third parties who won’t be afraid, to be honest.
Maddy Osman – Founder of The-Blogsmith
It’s very simple actually. Just make the first step – it doesn’t matter how small or big it is, it will get you to places you can’t imagine. Right now online conferences, remote working, and also mental health tools are becoming increasingly popular.
Oliver Sild – Founder of WebArx
The key to success is Focus, focus, and focus on your product and customers. Internationalize your product as soon as possible: English first, then add languages as you go. And call on professionals for this important job.
Benjamin Denis – Founder of SEOPress
Build an audience first or if you’ve already started a business and haven’t built an audience, start now. It isn’t too late. Even if you don’t know what you want to do, build or sell, start building an audience and then mold what product you build or how you serve people through the demographic you’ve attracted as well as what it is that you actually enjoy doing.
Alex Panagis – Founder of ScaleMath
From what I found, money comes almost naturally if you are helping others. You hear this over and over again and it’s hard to believe when you’re pressed for money. But as soon as you keep impacting others, they’ll start spreading the word about the results you delivered and how your business helped them overcome a certain challenge or problem.
Jan Koch – Founder of WP Mastery
Start a blog, grow a community, create an audience first. Notice what they struggle with and come up with a potential solution. Iterate based on feedback. They’ll tell you what to build. Leverage all your existing resources and knowledge. Don’t chase rainbows.
Adrian Spiac – Co-founder of TranslatePress
If you’re going to start your business, then treat it like one. Block out your time. This is important to establish your boundaries with yourself, your friends & family, and your clients.
Bridget Willard – a WordPress Consultant
Keep your “why” front and center, because when times get tough and you feel like quitting, it’s “why” that energizes you to push forward. Whatever that is for you, keep inspiration in plain sight that reminds you of that.
Jason Resnick – Founder of NurtureKit
Focus on making the product magical and keep pricing simple with as few ‘plans’ as possible to start with. You need to highlight all the goodies, features and show the net result that they’re expected to get from using your product.
Anthony Gordon – Founder of WooSignal
If you are able to identify the pain points of WordPress users and are able to solve them, you can launch a successful business. WordPress has an incredibly large market to address and is a powerful tool to build almost every web solution. As a result, this opens a lot of opportunities.
Jean Baptiste – Co-founder of WP Rocket
If you want to be successful as an entrepreneur, you must work mainly on your constant personal improvements. Not only the technical notion but mainly focus on your personal attitudes, such as communication, leadership, security, ability to make decisions, control of fear, management of emotions, etc…
Nando Pappalardo – Founder of YITH (YIThemes)
As a proponent to SaaS, launching recurring revenue solutions on top of WordPress is always an exciting way to start a new business. WordPress is extremely powerful and provides a ton out of the box, and some SaaS applications may live as subsites in a Multisite environment.
Mario Peshev – Founder of DevriX
I understand people start businesses to make money. And quite often when they look to make money, they want to make money FAST. My advice is to stay away from fast money. Find something you like. Instead of looking for solutions to problems, look for things that you truly enjoy working with day in and day out.
Johnny Nguyen – Founder of WPJohnny & JohnnyVPS
A cliche… But, if you want to start something, do it now. “Now” is the best time. Adopt experimentation habits early on. Always draw a line in the sand, benchmark, experiment. Learn from the outcomes of your actions – and from others (there is so much great knowledge online).
Michael Makijenko – Founder of Visual Composer
Know your target market. We cannot stress enough how important this is. Because my background is being a web agency owner, there are little details that I made sure our application provided but did not realize how important those little details were until we had web agencies using the platform.
Hans & Donata – Founders of Termageddon
Stay in Touch
If you’re looking to start your own business, you’ll definitely want to learn everything about your industry, the market, and your competitors. Make sure to network whenever and wherever possible!
Bryan Muthig – Founder of A2 Hosting
Simplify anything that you can so that you don’t burn yourself out (which unfortunately I’ve done a couple of times). Some might call these life hacks or the 80/20 rule, but it’s important to take a step back and look at everything on your plate to see if it’s reasonable. Work isn’t everything in life, and it’s good to have a healthy balance.
Brian Jackson – Founder of Perfmatters & Forgemedia
Pick up an area where you are passionate to work in and simply enjoy doing it – otherwise, you could give up pretty fast. Moreover, assemble a good and reliable team ‘cause you can’t do it all by yourself – well, at least, you can’t do it with high-quality output. “Think big, start small.”
Ivica Delic – Co-founder of Freelancers Tools
I’m a firm believer in scratching one’s own itch: have fun, experiment, find a problem, and try to solve that. When your solution works for you, put it out there and see if it’s useful for others. If it is not you’ve at least solved your own problem and gained knowledge & experience. If it is, you just might have found a product for yourself to nurture, grow, and conquer the world with (or at least a small part of it).
Frank Goossens – Founder of Optimizing Matters
Just stop hesitating and start something. Start somewhere. It will obviously never be perfect to begin with, but the sooner you start, the sooner you can learn and start iterating. You honestly need much less than you think to start.
Matt Connor – Founder of SSD Nodes
I dreamed for so long about owning a business and working for myself – my biggest regret in life is that I waited so long to do it. I was afraid, and I let that fear hold me back from doing what I really wanted to do. Starting my own business was absolutely the right decision for me – while I had never managed to keep a job longer than three years.
Natalie MacLees – Founder of Simply Schedule Appointments
Starting any business is a bit more difficult than the glorified news we read but it’s better than the tedious routine of a job. Almost all the time, it’s worth taking that flight. It’s a beautiful journey where you evolved as a person and put a dent in the universe in your own little way. Each one of the above has room for innovation. If you’re ready to do something differently, a business can be built.
Shikhil Sharma – Founder of Astra Security
I’ve since realized that to be unique and an expert in my field I don’t have to niche down to a specific client type, but instead niche down on what tools I work with so that I can attract a wider audience and deliver my best work to my clients, regardless of what type of agency they are.
Oliver Martin – Founder of NO LABEL Studios
You should do some research before you start your business to make sure it’s worth the risk. Even good ideas are Risky Business! Dig in and make sure what you’re building is something people want. We’re beyond the early WordPress days, where you could just build a plugin, theme, service and it would sell. You need to be willing to put in the work.
Joe Casabona – Founder of How I Built It
My advice is to find something you’re extremely passionate about and go full throttle. I’ve tried to get into several industries over the years, but nothing excites me nearly as much as hosting.
Ben Gabler – CEO & Founder of Rocket.net
Do it! It’s not easy but there’s nothing like the feeling of building something from scratch and making it a success, whatever the definition of that may be for you. You have to understand that as the business owner you have complete responsibility for every single thing that happens within it.
Vito Peleg – Founder of Atarim (WP FeedBack)
Invest in yourself, Keep learning, and most importantly, do your things today so you won’t regret it in the future by not doing it. Take a mentor that will help you with your marketing strategies or a designer that can beautify your site i.e, whatever help you need.
Shay Toder – Page Speed Optimization Expert
Don’t be afraid to pivot if you don’t have a path to success. That’s the beauty of starting small. You haven’t locked into one thing. If you want to create a new plugin or theme, I will start by developing trust in the community, not just selling hard or aggressively. Get your face out there and let people know you’re legit.
Dave Swift – Founder of Profitable Tools
If you start your own business in WordPress, you should focus more on customer service as the market is quite saturated. Also, many plugins and themes are already free and do an excellent job, so you need to check them and build better tools that attract more clients.
Sonal Sinha – Founder of SKT Themes
Here are 5 things I wish I had known before starting my own business. (1) Niche down early. (2) Build your business around the customer, not the product. (3) Being different is better than being better. (4) No one got rich and stayed rich by being the cheapest option. (5) Do more sales calls.
Adrian Tobey – Founder of Groundhogg
If you want to start a WordPress business, Now is the most significant time ever IMO. WordPress is making a massive shift towards Gutenberg, opening up all the new opportunities for beginners.
Munir Kamal – Founder of Editor Plus
If you dream of something, just take action and do it your way. It’s never late to start. Never start something for the sake of money and do not get into the rabbit race. Know your inner potential and passion. Do something you enjoy most.
Nazim Ansari – Founder of iPage Solution
Making great products! That’s the only way that keeps your business running. Other tactics are just short-term, a great product is long-term and will make your living. Remember that marketing a bad product is the shortest way to kill it.
Anh Tran – Founder of Meta Box
JUST DO IT. If you build a product business, learn how to develop an interactive prototype yourself. Especially if you want to onboard investors, make a product prototype before you raise capital. This takes out a lot of risk for your potential investors and therefore gives you better deal terms.
Sebastiaan van der Lans – Founder of WordProof
Throughout my professional life, I have always had a motto of “Motion Creates Motion“. The easiest way to explain this is when you are unsure what to do, just do something. You need to constantly keep yourself in motion and active in your business.
Jarrett Gucci – Founder of WP Fix It
Keep yourself updated, Delegate, and Always work globally. The WordPress ecosystem offers limitless opportunities to share your knowledge across the world, and even get paid for it! This is especially important when you’re living in a country with a “developing” (read: bad) economy; because you’ll be rewarded by everyone in the world in exchange for your knowledge and skills.
Barış Ünver – Founder of Optimocha
Keep networking and communicating with potential clients. If you’re going to give away services, find a local non-profit, because they’ll appreciate it more. Invest in the right tools and don’t undercharge your clients. The cheaper the client the more hours you’ll put into the project. A client that doesn’t value you enough to pay fairly well also does not value your time while you work on the project.
Ed Ellingham – Founder of Cloud Nine Web Design
Always keep learning and trying new things, Don’t be the cheapest option, and Stop waiting, ship it. This is something I struggled with for a long-time, always wanting to perfect something before I put it out there. Although I believe you should always deliver a quality product, set realistic expectations for your MVP, and get it out there to start collecting some real feedback.
Mark Zahra – CEO of RebelCode
My biggest piece of advice for starting a business is to not do it alone. Much of LifterLMS’s success is attributable to the relationship with my business partner Thomas Levy. We have completely different skill sets, and could not have done it alone without the other.
Make a plan and get started. Hesitation, or waiting for perfection are the enemies of progress. Just start. Get something going. And ask for help when you need it. Don’t be afraid to outsource and focus on the business part of your business. If you’re a painter, start painting. If you’re a web builder, then build a kickass website for yourself first, to showcase what you’re capable of.
