Bootstrapping a B2B SaaS to 150+ Million Yen ARR

· Geraldo Figueras

Recently, our CEO Iqbal Abdullah had the pleasure of being interviewed by the team of Tech Culture Podcast.

The hosts, Kaustubh Hiware and Prashant Anand, focus on bringing conversations with top startup founders in Japan running successful businesses. The series is full of actionable insights on a market that, still today, can be quite daunting for foreign entrepreneurs.

Before heading LaLoka Labs, Iqbal headed the multinational, fully-remote team of Xoxzo. Bootstrapping the whole operation from the start, Iqbal managed to bring the SaaS products of Xoxzo into a 150+ million Japanese Yen of annual recurring revenue.

This is how the talk went:

  • 00:00 – Intro
  • 01:28 – Xoxzo’s pronunciation and history
  • 05:05 – Beginnings of Xoxzo
  • 08:25 – Evolving use-cases of Xoxzo
  • 13:27 – Continuous improvement in the long-term
  • 16:56 – B2B sales in Japan
  • 21:30 – Selling a majority stake in Xoxzo
  • 25:15 – Bootstrapping Xoxzo
  • 27:02 – Open-source grants
  • 29:25 – Contribution to Python community
  • 33:01 – Adventures at Laloka Labs
  • 38:12 – Book recommendations
  • 42:30 – Advice to build your own business in Japan

You can listen to the whole story here.