At only 27, this son of Taiwanese immigrants went from being fired on Xmas day to bootstrapping a BILLION dollar company.

The best part?

He built the whole thing by solving his family’s problems 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ Tim Chen was born in 1982 in Oklahoma to two computer scientists.

He grew up in Houston oscillating between math/science competitions by day and sneaking out of his house by night.

At 17, he got into Stanford…
2/ There, many of his friends went on to start successful tech companies.

He dreamed of being an entrepreneur one day.

But couldn’t resist the excitement and $ of Finance.

After a short stint at an Investment Bank, he landed a job at one of the most prestigious hedge funds…
3/ 2 years later it was 2008.

The global financial crisis was underway.

In Sept of 08, Chen watched in horror as Lehman filed for bankruptcy.

In Dec of that year, right after Xmas, he got a pink slip.

FIRED.

He had no idea what to do next…
4/ In his words: “Half of my friends in finance were unemployed... We would go to Dave & Buster's in the middle of the day, what else was there to do?”

His family, realizing he had all this free time, started asking for help with financial decisions…
5/ His sister wanted him to research a new credit card for her. His parents, a mutual fund.

With nothing better to do, he started googling.

What he saw and found made him sick to his stomach...
6/ All that existed were a bunch of websites trying to sell him something.

Everything was biased.

The information was shallow.

He thought it would take 3 mins but instead…
7/ It took him a whole week to gather the information and build a spreadsheet comparing various cards in a "clear and unbiased" way.

His sister loved it.

She forwarded it to friends who forwarded it.
8/ One day a friend of a friend met him and said “oh yea you’re the credit card spreadsheet guy…”

Tim started to see an opportunity…
9/ What if he could build an unbiased website for financial products.

Something to really serve the little guy.

He built a directory of credit unions.

But it got no traffic and barely any links.
10/ He decided he would “just” write high quality articles and begin posting them to his website.

NerdWallet dot com

The first year was brutal.

The company spent $800 on domain + hosting.

And generated revenue of $75 (that's not a typo) in 2009...
11/ Tim spent 16+ hour days writing articles, begging for links and convincing friends to write articles for cheap/free

He was lived off $5 footlongs while his GF paid the rent

The next year (2010) started slow but then turned...
12/ Tim woke up one morning in June and traffic was up 5X!

He checked his tools and realized his content was finally getting ranked by Google.

He saw 3x monthly growth as Google realized he had the best credit card content online.

The company started generating real revenue…
13/ While Tim reinvented the content model, he stuck with a classic revenue model: affiliate marketing.

Credit card companies get >40% of their customers via affiliates.

Many are willing to pay >$300 for a qualified customer!

By 2013, business was booming.
14/ Estimates have it in the low 8 figures of revenue that year.

Tim should have been celebrating.

Instead, he was going through one the toughest periods of NerdWallet’s history.

Tim had hired lots of “wall street” types and some were not adjusting well to startup life…
15/ Each leader had their own vertical "Biz Unit"

But some were acting like they were still on Wall Street. Competitive and territorial with a zero sum mentality

To compound the issue they had hired people like them

Finally, at the end of the year, Tim did what was necessary
16/ He fired 20% of the staff.

Tim delivered the news to those who remained.

While they weren’t inspired by his words, they were inspired by his actions.

He hired executive coaches, changed the org structure, and routinely let people go when they didn’t fit the culture.
17/ By 2015, the company was doing >$60M in revenue.

Nerdwallet was growing fast, but Tim was still barely holding on as CEO.

They had inquiries from venture capitalists before, but they weren't good fits.

Eventually he found his perfect match in IVP, and raised $65MM...
18/ That new capital allowed them to start building apps, tools, and tons more content to help their customers.

To Tim, this is just the start of a mission to increase financial literacy worldwide.

He's in for the long haul
19/ In 2017, another culture shock rippled through the company after they missed revenue targets and 11% of the company was laid off.

Tim saw this as a leadership failing that started at the top:
20/ "I needed to evolve from a scrappy, seed stage founder to a more professional executive, which required several seismic mindset shifts. Essentially, I needed to do the work to get out of my own way."

That work paid off when after 12 years of building Nerdwallet IPOd...
21/ In 2021 Nerdwallet is a 300MM+ revenue juggernaut in financial literacy, tools, and content.

Tim retains full control.

Now worth over $900MM, he has no plans to step down.

Why? He can't stop keep educating and improving the world...
23/ Lessons from Tim Chen's broke banker to billionaire journey:

1) Everything starts small
2) Leadership and communication are the hardest parts of business building
3) Solve a real customer problem
4) Don't take the easy way out
5) Help people help themselves
24/ If you enjoyed this thread, follow me @jspujji

I tweet a Bootstrapped Giants🧵 like this every week.

RT the whole thread to share this amazing story!!
25/ And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter: The 3-1-4. It comes up every other week with 3 links, 1 thought and 4 opportunities.

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More from @jspujji

10 Nov
In February, I launched my first DTC brand.

I put my name, $, and reputation on the line.

It was an utter failure.

Here is the story and what I learned 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ After ~10 years of running Ampush as CEO, I stepped into the chairman seat.

Ampush had helped countless brands build and scale customer acquisition including: Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox, Stitch Fix, and many others.

I had the obvious idea: why don’t I start a brand?
2/ I was eager to get back to “early days entrepreneurship.”

I spent 2020 both decompressing and anxiously thinking "what's next"

Investing? Another company? Something else?

I love the process of building businesses so I went for my dream: A venture studio.

But now what?
Read 40 tweets
7 Nov
Bootstrapped companies now worth billions that fueled the e-commerce revolution.

3 of my most liked threads 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ Fashion Nova exploded by using IG content to turn customers into influencers
2/ Shopify is the easiest and fastest way to launch an ecommerce store:
Read 5 tweets
5 Nov
Bootstrapped entrepreneurs always have the last laugh.

A son of Iranian immigrants turned a single LA retail store into a $1,000,000,000+ ecommerce giant.

All with $0.00 in funding

Here’s the story 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ Richard Saghian was born in 1982.

His family was a minority group of Jewish-Iranians who fled during the revolution.

After moving to America, they got into women’s fashion retail.

In 2006, Richard followed in their footsteps…
2/ He started his own store. His idea was simple: affordable, unique clothes to wear to the club.

His goal was to open 100, but he stopped at 5.

Early on, he had the idea of opening up an internet store...
Read 24 tweets
3 Nov
You spent 18 months getting ready to launch:

- Researching your customer segment
- Designing a product they need
- Lining up suppliers
- Building a perfect website

YOU ARE READY TO GO

All you need is an agency to market your product, right?

WRONG

Here’s what to do instead 👇🏽
1/ First, the biggest mistake I see DTC founders make is immediately trying to outsource growth right after they build the product or *anytime* its not working.

Should you hire an agency? a consultant? a full time person? A mix? None?

What's the right choice?
2/ It's all of the above.

Depending on your company's stage and the strengths of your team.

I believe there are a few major inflection points:

Startup stage is about finding P/M fit, and spending from 0 to $1,000,000 a year

Scaling from there...
Read 21 tweets
29 Oct
At 27, she took her $5,000 life savings, a good idea and tons of hustle to build a BILLION dollar business.

The Crazy Part?

She had almost no prior experience in business.

This story never gets old 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ Sara was born in 1971 to an Artist Mom and Attorney Dad.

Her dad made it a point to ask weekly at the dinner table: “What did you fail at?”

He drilled into her that if you are not failing, you are not trying

Sara had early entrepreneurial instincts…
2/ A hustler from the start, she was always coming up with “kid businesses”:

Sold special charm socks at school.
Ran the neighborhood haunted house.
And later started a babysitting service.

At 16, she faced a life altering tragedy.
Read 25 tweets
28 Oct
Great AMA today!

Here are some of the threads... tune in next week same time/same place for another AMA
Read 4 tweets

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