Kevee

Don Pottinger started as an aspiring self-taught developer, co-founding a company with his younger brother to learn programming. After realizing self-teaching had limits, he joined Big Nerd Ranch, an agency, to level up his skills. There he learned the craft of building products and fell in love with the discipline. Hungry to learn from the best in Atlanta's startup scene, he interviewed and joined Kevee in December 2014—a company founded by a co-founder of Partot (acquired for close to $100 million). His goal was simple: learn from an experienced founder and hopefully launch his own company within the same portfolio.

Things moved fast. When Don arrived, Kevee was competing with Zapier, solving data integration for e-commerce companies. But the product was hemorrhaging customers—churn was unsustainable. In early 2015, the company pivoted completely. The original CTO left, and Don—still relatively junior—felt confident he could lead the rebuild. "I felt very confident that I could build a Greenfield project," he recalls. The team shrunk from 20-25 to just a handful of core people. Don became Director of Engineering, then CTO within months. They spent the next 18 months building a new marketing automation platform for e-commerce, with Don writing nearly every line of code. They received a $300,000 check from the investor—"Here's your shot."

But the cap table was a disaster. The original founder and early hires still owned large chunks, while Don and the new CEO owned tiny slivers. When they hit $250k ARR and tried to raise, investors saw the messy cap table and walked. "They would be very interested in what we were doing... and then a couple weeks later, there were crickets," Don says. No one would fund them. In fall 2016, the CEO quit. The investor was ready to shut down the company entirely.

Don's path to acquisition started with desperation meeting conviction. When the investor asked what he wanted to do, Don proposed something radical: "I want to buy the company." The investor did napkin math and realized this was nothing to him—a line item in his portfolio. For Don, it was everything. They agreed on a price: one dollar. Don famously walked over and dropped a dollar in an envelope on the investor's desk to make it official.

Now owning 100% but running solo, Don discovered the brutal reality: acquiring new customers while coding simultaneously while supporting existing customers is brutal. He burned out hard after six months of relentless work. He took a step back and asked himself a hard question: "Do I want this to be a billion-dollar company, or do I want a good life?"

The answer was lifestyle business. Don had $250k ARR with minimal expenses—cloud provider credits kept costs low. He could support his growing family (eventually four kids) while maintaining flexibility. He hired salespeople at various points ("didn't really work out that well") and brought on a data scientist friend about a year before exit to build AI-powered email features. But mostly, he lifestyled it, shipping when interested, letting marketing slide, doing inbound sales when it came.

He credits "Startups for the Rest of Us" podcast with keeping him sane. "After spending the entire day on Kevee, I would fire up the podcast and listen to you and Mike," he told Rob Walling. "It felt like I was in therapy... It felt like I wasn't alone."

In December 2018, his wife told him she was pregnant with their fourth child and wanted to step back from nursing. Don put out feelers. A friend from Google reached out with a job offer. He joined Google in April 2019 while continuing to run Kevee and talk to acquirers. Many wanted him to join post-acquisition—he said no. Eventually, a venture studio with a similar product but stronger sales/marketing chops acquired Kevee after due diligence.

Don signed the acquisition papers in the hospital after his fourth child was born—life changing money, not "never work again" money, but meaningful. He closed the Kevee chapter and moved on.

But Don wasn't done. Bored at Google, he reconnected with a co-founder he'd met through Indie Hackers—someone who'd built a profitable business in the language-learning space. They decided to team up. Launched Lengua Talk in January 2020, and by September (nine months later), they'd hit mid-six figures in ARR. "It's been really amazing to go from literally zero dollars in revenue to mid-six figures in ARR," Don says. The difference: a committed co-founder, clear product-market fit in a pandemic-driven market (remote language learning via Zoom), and Don's hard-won expertise from years of grinding on Kevee.