How One SaaS Startup Achieved Profitability in 2 Years

Andy Cook, cofounder of Tettra, was having trouble raising money.

The company that he and his childhood friend, Nelson Joyce, had founded was running out of money, so they figured they’d go the same route as every other software company and raise a seed round.

“At some point after we’d been trying for three months and had no good leads, we were like, ‘we’re not going to be able to close this round, it’s just not going to happen. What do we do?” remembers Cook. “We needed to get to profitability because that was the only way to survive.”

Tettra isn’t every other software company.

For starters, its founders met in 7th grade. Okay, so while that has little bearing on the product itself, they build, market, and sell like neighbors–humanly. Pragmatically.

This makes the song and dance of fundraising a little unnatural for both of them.

Tettra is built on the premise of making collaboration, and knowledge sharing, easier. Naturally, Cook and Joyce are passionate about the potential of the company, so rather than chase funding, they decided to chase a much more ambitious goal–profitability.

This is their story, and I decided to start it off not at the point of going to market, or the prototype, but something much more interesting–their friendship.

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