#133: Bootstrapper Sells School Fundraising Platform to PE Investors - Howard Gottlieb
Release Date: 02/28/2025
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#135: Vertical SaaS Investor Shares Proven Paths to Scale Up Big – Dave Yuan
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#133: Bootstrapper Sells School Fundraising Platform to PE Investors - Howard Gottlieb
Practical Founders Podcast
Howard Gottlieb started in 2012 as a reading-based fundraising platform that helped students raise money while boosting education. Their easy platform and simple fundraising approach created amazing results. The Read-a-Thon business grew steadily and profitably without any outside funding. Read-A-Thon helped over 4000 schools and students raise over $30 million in donations. Their platform has tracked over 30 billion reading minutes by students who have used it to earn donations. Read-A-Thon was successfully acquired by private equity investors...
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#132: Bootstrapper Serving Private Equity Firms Acquired by PE-Backed Strategic – Richard Change
Practical Founders Podcast
Richard Change is co-founder and CEO of , the provider of FirmView software. FirmView® is the leading carry and compensation management platform for private equity investors to manage their internal compensation from fees and carried interest. Richard was a senior architect for a large private equity firm when he discovered this complex problem that was being managed on spreadsheets. He left to start PFA Solutions and bootstrapped the development of FirmView with consulting revenue. From inception, through growth and ultimately acquisition, Richard never took any outside funding....
info_outlineHoward Gottlieb started Read-A-Thon in 2012 as a reading-based fundraising platform that helped students raise money while boosting education. Their easy platform and simple fundraising approach created amazing results. The Read-a-Thon business grew steadily and profitably without any outside funding.
Read-A-Thon helped over 4000 schools and students raise over $30 million in donations. Their platform has tracked over 30 billion reading minutes by students who have used it to earn donations.
Read-A-Thon was successfully acquired by private equity investors in early 2023 for an undisclosed amount. The business has continued to grow and expand with a new CEO and key executives, with Howard on the board as an advisor and now a minority investor in the company.
Quote from Howard Gottlieb, founder of Read-A-Thon
“I have been very blessed and very lucky in my journey with the success of Read-A-Thon. Everyone should realize that and have some humility.
“If you succeed at the game, you can be the smartest guy or the smartest woman with the most brilliant idea, but it still will take 50% or more luck for everything to align correctly to succeed. Just realize that. It takes a lot of good fortune.
“At Read-A-Thon, our lucky moment was COVID because online fundraising was only in its infancy. When COVID hit and schools were out, Read-A-Thon was almost the only viable option. Our growth went from 40% a year to 100%, then 150% a year. So that was luck after all these years.”
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