
Thank HN: My startup was born here and is now 10 years old - paraschopra
Hello HN,<p>I&#x27;m Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We&#x27;re an A&#x2F;B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009.<p>As a 22 year old fresh out of college, I had launched an early prototype of a marketing platform in 2009 here, got initial users from HN (including patio11) who gave their feedback that my product was trying to do too many things. Their inputs are what that led me to focusing on one thing (A&#x2F;B testing) and that&#x27;s how I built and launched &quot;Visual Website Optimizer&quot;(now called VWO). Here&#x27;s that Show HN thread from 2009: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=876141" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=876141</a><p>I can&#x27;t thank this community enough - without Hacker News, VWO wouldn&#x27;t have existed. Today, we&#x27;re a team of 250+ people and seen that initial &quot;Show HN&quot; grow into a $20mn+ bootstrapped business (no VC funding). If anyone&#x27;s interested in reading more, I&#x27;ve blogged this journey (from launch to now) on our website: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vwo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;vwo-evolution-10-years&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vwo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;vwo-evolution-10-years&#x2F;</a><p>For any early stage entrepreneurs &#x2F; indie hackers reading this, I&#x27;m sharing my story to let you know that you don&#x27;t need connections, funding or breakthroughs to build a successful business. All you need is a hunger to make it happen and a community (like this one) to give you honest feedback for iterating on your product. If you are what Paul Graham calls as relentless resourceful, you will build a successful business.<p>So, thank you HN! Thanks @patio11 for your feedback and initial shoutouts in 2009. And thanks Paul. Beyond YC funding, you&#x27;ve impacted lives of many other folks (like me) through your essays and by making Hn happen.<p>PS: I don&#x27;t know if this post will get any attention on HN today, but I felt like I had to do this :)
======
foxfired
First of all congratulations. A lot of Show HN start enthusiastically and then
a year later the domain name doesn't resolve anymore. I'm glad you kept
jabbing.

In 2011, we were knee deep in google products. We used Google Analytics and
the now defunct Google Web Optimizer (no not the one in GA). Our business team
wasn't too happy about using GWO. There was something in the script triggered
bounce rates in Google Analytics.

Our first solution was to build a script to manage which script to load first.
But, we saw that if you don't load GA right away, the metrics were somehow
off. But loading GA first sometimes double counts page views.

So as a result, I build an internal A/B testing tool that worked seamlessly.
Since it was controlled in the back-end, I could decide when to load the
script without causing the double page views. After months of testing, the
business team decided to use Visual Web Optimizer. I was pretty pissed.

But, vwo solved the issues of double counting, and redirect. Not sure how it
worked but everyone was happy about it. I started working exclusively with
this tool and implemented it in a dozen teams. It was a great tool.

But then, a new manager was hired, he said he knew a better tool, and moved
our team to optimizely. There was no reason whatsoever. Until I left, I kept
recommending and implementing vwo in other teams for a/b testing.

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks for recommending VWO. And sorry about replacing your internally built
a/b testing tool :)

------
btilly
Well done Paras!

You have come a long way since you asked me questions about
[http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-
testing/](http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-testing/). I'm glad that it was
part of your journey!

~~~
paraschopra
Ben, your thought process on A/B testing has been a big influence. The deck of
yours on effective A/B testing (above) is pure gold.

------
phreeza
Somewhat meta, but great to see that most of the accounts on the original
thread are still active.

I haven't got a successful startup to show for it, but I have been on HN for
more than 10 years, and feel like it has played a significant role in forming
my worldview.

I hope we'll still be here in another 10 (or 30) years, nitpicking each
other's ideas!

~~~
sosuke
I'm with you; 13 years(ish) now and I'm still trying to make something.

~~~
jedberg
Wow, until this moment I hadn't really thought about how I've been using HN
for over 13 years, and reddit for almost 15 years.

There are people who are using the internet who have never known the world
without those things.

I feel older now.

------
skinnymuch
Hope I’m not too late for some one to see my post. This is a huge inspiration
and an amazing story.

I’m genuinely curious - not being a smart ass. Isn’t 250 employees a lot for
the number listed ($20M+)? $2M of rev a month divided by 250+ people is only
7-8K a month. I guess if the majority are overseas that can work?

~~~
paraschopra
Yes, we're comfortably profitable as we're based out of India.

Having a big team is the reason our customer support [1] is best in industry.
We have a large team of dedicated and passionate people ready to guide
customers for all their problems.

[1] [https://vwo.com/why-us/customer-success/](https://vwo.com/why-
us/customer-success/)

~~~
ignoramous
Nice. Love a business that makes customer support a top priority.

How has the covid situation impacted it? What few changes made significant
difference in how you coped with it?

Also what is the customer service software do you use?

~~~
paraschopra
Yes, covid has impacted us like most SaaS businesses. We released a free
product VWO Deploy for helping our customers update their websites with
notices and updates quickly without IT: vwo.com/deploy

We use Zendesk.

------
pascalxus
I think it's awesome that HackerNews exists. Sadly, every other platform on
the internet seems to criticize and discourage new products (except product
hunt).

~~~
mleonhard
I spent >1 year building a new dating app. Somebody posted a dating app idea
on reddit that closely matches what I built. I messaged the author asking for
feedback on my design. They didn't reply and even downvoted my comment on
their thread.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/exzcsm/dating_app_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/exzcsm/dating_app_idea/fgo7v7o/)

There are all kinds of people in the world. I'm glad HN exists.

HN mods: Thanks for your hard work.

HN commenters: Thanks for being kind.

~~~
maverick2007
Not too derail this thread too much but I like the idea for your app, I made
something similar for platonic friendships a while back and still am a big
believer in the idea! How much traction have you gotten with your app?

~~~
mleonhard
Cool. Can you share a link?

I haven't launched my app anywhere yet. I struggled with devops tooling,
started to get burned out, and now lockdown.

------
ghoomketu
Congrats paras. I've been a big fan of your original work but I was rather
disappointed to see your recent work like
[https://pushcrew.com](https://pushcrew.com) which is everything that is wrong
with the internet today.

So many Indian sites are using your technology to make web browsing a
nightmare for visitors and spam unsuspecting readers with web notifications.

I hate such popups and modals created by pushcrew like the fact it forces
users to optin to these notifications on articles. It was not what the web
notification api was designed for.

~~~
whycombagator
I am using nextdns with several block lists, both pushcrew and vwo are blocked
for me.

~~~
bingojess
Not surprising given the product... Almost all analytical tracking/telemertry
will be blocked, Google Analytics etc.

------
macspoofing
Congratulations! It's a big milestone and growing a company to 250+ people is
no small feat. That you did this without major institutional funding is
awesome!

And thanks for writing up your story. I bet there's another 22-year old kid
lurking in here somewhere and getting inspired to start something.

------
rajekas
Wow, small world. I had a brief exchange with you when you were an intern at
IISc in the summer of 2006 and came to a talk of mine.

At that time you were interested in the cognitive abilities of bacteria, but
looks like you took a different but equally successful path.

Congratulations!

~~~
paraschopra
I remember! That internship stint at IISc ended up with this paper on modeling
a gene network in E. coli: [https://bit.ly/3flh6nh](https://bit.ly/3flh6nh)

------
npiit
Congrats. Really inspiring. I would like to know how many old SHOW HN posts
turned out to be that successful.

------
abana
Hey Paras, This is very encouraging and exciting. Congratulations. Would you
please share with us your user acquisition journey and also how you determined
pricing and the various pricing tiers.

Any other stories in your journey would be appreciated e.g Growing your team,
sales and marketing

* Edit - Added more areas I would need your input from

~~~
paraschopra
There are a few podcasts and interviews about the initial days of VWO. You may
find the following resources helpful:

[1] My very first interview in 2012: [https://mixergy.com/interviews/chopra-
visual-website-optimiz...](https://mixergy.com/interviews/chopra-visual-
website-optimizer-interview/)

[2] A relatively recent one: [https://inc42.com/startups/wingify-paras-chopra-
saas-startup...](https://inc42.com/startups/wingify-paras-chopra-saas-
startup/)

[3] I've been blogging about many lessons I've learned on my blog
[https://invertedpassion.com](https://invertedpassion.com)

------
onion2k
This is the sort of post I come to HN for. Fantastic work, and congratulations
on your success.

------
CM30
Congrats on your hard work Paras! As someone whose company/employer has used
VWO for years now, it's by far the best A/B testing solution on the market,
and a seriously powerful piece of kit that a lot of companies have really
overlooked the potential in.

Interesting to hear that it was first posted on Hacker News as well.

~~~
paraschopra
Thank you for your kind words!

------
neovive
Congratulations! Such an inspirational success story. I still remember that
icon set from your 2009 UI screenshot :)

~~~
paraschopra
I'm giddy with happiness that you remember the 2009 screenshot :)

------
kalid
Congrats Paras, it's great seeing far VWO has come!

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks Kalid. I remember exchanging messages with you.

Also, love BetterExplained.com - without it, I would have never developed an
intuition of exponential and logarithm functions. You do a great job at that.

~~~
kalid
Appreciate it Paras! I remember our exchanges fondly as well :).

------
metadata
Congratulations, Paras! I was one of the very early customers and am so glad
you came this far.

~~~
paraschopra
Thank you for giving us revenue in those early days. As a bootstrapped
company, that was the only source of funding that helped us sustain and grow.

------
mcgrathpm11
Congrats, Paras. I've been a huge fan of VWO and fairly recently built
somewhat of a competitor - evolv.ai. I've referenced your sales assets,
training videos, and I have sent people your direction when they weren't a fit
for our offering.

~~~
paraschopra
Thank you! We're also inspired by evolv.ai's unique take on website
optimization.

------
me_smith
Congratulations! As a new member, I am happy to see how this community can
help others.

------
jonathan-kosgei
It's insane how I was thinking of doing this exact same thing this same week
and how similar our stories are! Though we're much earlier in our journey :)

I launched ipdata here 3 yrs ago, at 21 while still in college and now 3yrs
later we're a profitable bootstrapped company.

Congratulations on your incredible success!

Here is our thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15879115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15879115)

Thank you HN!

------
cosmodisk
I'm not much involved with web dev so my knowledge of A/B testing tooling
isn't great. However,I went on to your website to check the product, clicked
around for a bit and I was like: 'ok,this is good,yes,this one's nice too.
What about x,y,z..Oh, they've got these too'. And suddenly there's a shower of
ideas for A/B testing for any future project. Looks like a good product,well
done!

------
edpichler
Cool. I have seen VWO before while looking for a tool, more than once. This
history is one more proof that big things can start small.

------
lpellis
Congrats! It always amazes me that there are still big/old players in a field
that I thought I was familiar with.. I have seen many A/B testing tools but
somehow never yours, I must be living in a different Google bubble. Guess that
shows that there is always room for more players.

~~~
paraschopra
Yep, and that's a great learning for us. For us, it's easy to assume that
we've saturated our potential after being around ten years into the market but
that's not true at all.

Your comment is a great reminder towards that.

------
longtermdd
VWO and Optimizely are still incredibly expensive for basic A/B testing. I
feel like this could disrupted pretty easily with a $29/mo offer. If you know
any service like this, feel free to reach out to me. I'd love to connect you
with many startups.

~~~
sharmi
Your profile has no email id. Is there another way to reach you?

------
bitKong
Congratulations on the feat attained despite taking a decade. It still shows
one should not relent as success is within, above all, HN community is a very
supportive one, in which the OP can benefit from the diverse wealth of
knowledge in here, be it criticism or good feedback

------
pavlov
Congratulations on the milestone, and thanks for sharing your story in the
blog post. It's great to see a product's evolution over a decade.

I want to highlight that it's not as clear-cut as this: "If you are what Paul
Graham calls as relentless resourceful, you will build a successful business."

I know there are people reading who consider themselves relentless and
resourceful, yet are not successful after perhaps a decade or more of trying.
The mental health impact of long-term failure can be crushing (I've been
there).

They should understand that there is an element of luck involved, and if they
didn't make it to $20MM straight from college, that doesn't mean they're
worthless or can't make it anymore. The experiences of dead-ends and failures
can be channeled into something that will set them apart, but it takes
honesty. Luck is not a one-way thing: you need to be in a position to take
advantage of the luck that comes your way, and mentally ready to jump on it.

~~~
WetBurd
Absolutely! The OP certainly deserves much due respect, especially for taking
the time to share and document his business efforts.

However there are tons of people who likely "made the right moves" but were
simply not as lucky or lacked resources to make success happen. If anything,
this recent pandemic should shed light on how certain events are beyond any
one individual's control.

~~~
macspoofing
You're not necessarily wrong, but you have to be careful with this kind of
thinking as it can easily be interpreted as fatalism.

The reality is that yes, luck plays a role, but success isn't a coin-flip.
It's more like poker, where luck dominates individual hands, but good
decisions dominate the long-game.

------
bdickason
Thanks for sharing this! I’ve followed you since that show HN post (tried the
product back in the day but never stuck) and am happy you have achieved
success!! Nice work!

------
bookmarkable
Congrats on your success!

May I ask how you ended up with a three letter dot com?

~~~
paraschopra
We paid $30k for it (but I guess that was a steal, so we lucked out on this
one).

------
sagunsh
Congratulations and thank you for sharing your story. For someone starting to
get into the entrepreneur world your story is inspiring. Wish you all the best
for future.

------
tarun_anand
Congratulations Paras. Good to see your post. I live down the road from NSP. I
find it remarkable that you built a deep tech company in that part of the
world.

------
sound1
Congratulations Paras!! Wish you continued success. It would be awesome to
hear from you what specific things and people helped you to be successful in
HN.

------
Axsuul
So cool to see more bootstrapped successes! Congrats :)

------
janeshmane
Congrats! Would love to hear more about how you acquired your earliest
customers and what growth channels have worked best for you.

------
soumyadeb
Congrats and thanks for sharing your story. It's just amazing how many
startups this community has helped built.

------
mattmaroon
I used this product in the early days and it was great! Glad to see you guys
have been so successful since.

------
Reedx
Congrats Paras! 10 years is no small feat. Thanks for sharing, and hope to see
this again in another decade!

------
gtaank
Congrats Paras! couldn't be more proud! Know a lot of the extremely hard work
put in via Sparsh!

~~~
paraschopra
Yes, Sparsh has put a lot of hard work and I'm lucky to have him as a co-
founder.

------
tj0
Congratulations! And thank you for posting this. These kind of stories are
inspiring and feed motivation.

------
fabiandesimone
Great being here on your original post and this one. Time does fly. Congrats!

------
joshuakelly
What was year one like?

~~~
paraschopra
I wrote about it here: [https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-
evolution-10-years/](https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/)

------
pieterhg
Congrats. Amazing story

------
oknoorap
congrats paras really inspiring, one word that I will remember and keep it as
inspiration is: "All you need is a hunger to make it happen", thanks.

------
alvatech
Congratulations. Your journey is inspiring!

------
shinepl10
you should have pricing upfront without any forms to request it - I hate that
approach

~~~
kuroguro
He probably A/B tested it :)

~~~
paraschopra
We have, multiple times.

------
rawphi
So cool! All the best for your future.

------
heroic
Congrats!

------
rokhayakebe
Bootstrapped! Amazing!

------
wprapido
Cheers! Well done!

------
destraynor
Congrats Paras!

------
irs
Congratulations!

------
dataminded
Congratulations!

------
sandGorgon
Congrats Paras !

------
influx
Congratulations!

------
mylons
this is really cool. congratulations.

------
nhooyr
Mad respect.

------
vegesm
Congrats!

------
markshepard
Congrats!

------
ram1981
Congrats

------
ajjai
Congrats

------
dbancajas
so sick man.

------
kossTKR
What's going on here exactly? Why does this post have an insane amount of
upvotes and like 50 posts only with text like "Congratz my man!" or other
people who seem to know this dude and contribute with nothing?

~~~
searchableguy
From the guidelines -

 _Please don 't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading,
foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.
If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data._

~~~
nus07
No offense but your account was created 18 days ago. Something seems very
weird about this post.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here. Plenty of new accounts are old users.

