By: Joshua Bonnell

In a world where startup success is often measured by how much venture capital you can raise, Kyle Bigley is showing that sometimes the most effective way to build a business is to take a different approach entirely.

While his competitors at Klaviyo, Postscript, and Attentive have raised significant amounts in funding and hired hundreds of employees, Kyle has built TxtCart into a $2.2 million annual recurring revenue business with just five full-time employees. For context, most SaaS companies aim for $200,000 per employee, which is generally considered a strong benchmark.

This isn’t just a story about efficiency. It provides valuable insight into building a sustainable, profitable business that is more focused on customer success than on meeting investor expectations.

The Anti-VC Playbook

Kyle’s approach to building TxtCart is quite different from the traditional startup advice you might typically encounter. There are no pitch decks. No investor meetings. No burning through millions of dollars to “find product-market fit.” Instead, the guiding principle has been simple: build something people genuinely need, charge them for it, and use the revenue to improve the product.

“Many people assume that a lot of funding is necessary for success,” Kyle explains. “But, at the end of the day, it really comes down to resourcefulness and passion.”

This philosophy was born out of necessity. When Kyle first started TxtCart, he was a project manager living with his parents, working on his SMS platform in the evenings after his day job.

For the first two years, Kyle and his cofounders funded everything themselves. Kyle would work from 7 AM to 6 PM, then come home and work another two to four hours each evening on TxtCart. Weekends were fully dedicated to the business.

It was, in his words, “a monastic period” of his life. But it required him to be very disciplined with every decision. When you’re funding growth with your own money, there isn’t much room to waste resources on vanity metrics or features that don’t directly enhance customer success.

The $40,000 Learning Experience

This disciplined approach worked well for Kyle, but it also led to some costly lessons. In 2023, feeling confident about TxtCart’s growth, he decided to hire a sales team. He brought on an account executive and two business development reps through a headhunter agency.

The result? Zero new customers and $40,000 down the drain.

“The product wasn’t mature enough for that initiative to succeed,” Kyle admits. But instead of letting this failure hold him back, Kyle used it to refine his approach to progressive hiring, a strategy that many bootstrapped businesses can benefit from.

“As a bootstrapped company, you can’t really afford to hire full-time talent in the US,” he explains. “You need to negotiate deals where people come on part-time and have a stake in the business.”

This approach has allowed TxtCart to scale efficiently without the overhead that often comes with VC-funded companies. Today, the company operates with five full-time employees and 20 contractors, which gives them the flexibility to scale according to actual business needs rather than meeting the expectations of investors.

The Power of Aligned Incentives

One of the biggest advantages of bootstrapping is that it creates an alignment between the company’s success and customer success. When your customers are literally your only source of revenue, their success becomes your success.

This is reflected in TxtCart’s performance-based pricing model. Instead of charging fixed monthly fees regardless of results, TxtCart only earns when it actually generates revenue for its customers through automated flows.

“We eat our own dog food,” Kyle explains. “If we’re not generating revenue for our customers, we don’t deserve to be paid. This model reduces risk for growing brands and aligns our incentives very closely with theirs.”

This approach might be challenging for a VC-funded company that has to show consistent growth in monthly recurring revenue. But for a bootstrapped company, it’s a strong reflection of confidence in the product and alignment with customers’ needs.

The results so far have been encouraging. TxtCart has supported its 3,000+ customers in generating substantial revenue across various industries, with brands seeing an average of 21% of their total sales attributed to SMS conversations. When your success is closely tied to your customers’ success, everyone stands to benefit.

Building for the Long Term

While VC-funded competitors often focus on rapid growth and eventually exiting, Kyle is focused on building TxtCart for the long haul. This long-term thinking is evident in every aspect of the business.

“The brands we work with aren’t Amazon,” Kyle says. “They’re entrepreneurs starting something from the ground up. They need tools that can work immediately and deliver real ROI.”

This focus on serving real businesses has given TxtCart a sustainable competitive advantage. While competitors are aiming for enterprise deals with long sales cycles, TxtCart focuses on making it easy for SMB brands to get started and see tangible results quickly.

The onboarding process takes about five minutes. The ROI can often be seen within days. And the support is provided by people who genuinely understand the challenges of running a growing ecommerce business.

The Efficiency Advantage

Perhaps the most striking aspect of TxtCart’s success is just how efficient they are. With $2.2 million in ARR and just five full-time employees, they’re generating $440,000 per full-time employee. Compare that to their VC-funded competitors:

• Klaviyo employs over 1,500 people and generates roughly $320,000 per employee.
  
• Postscript has hundreds of employees and much lower per-employee revenue.
  
• Many SaaS companies struggle to reach $200,000 per employee.

This efficiency isn’t just about keeping costs low. It’s about building a business that can adapt quickly to changes in the market, customer needs, and new opportunities.

“We don’t have the luxury of throwing more people at problems,” Kyle says. “We have to be strategic with every decision we make. That forces us to build better systems, make smarter decisions, and focus on what really matters.”

This efficiency also extends to their technology choices. While competitors are building complex, enterprise-grade platforms that require large engineering teams to maintain, TxtCart has focused on creating a powerful yet simple solution. Their AI does much of the heavy lifting, allowing a small team to serve thousands of customers effectively.

The Contrarian Bet That’s Paying Off

Kyle’s decision to bootstrap TxtCart from the start was a contrarian move. In an industry where SMS marketing companies were raising large rounds of funding and aggressively hiring, he chose to remain lean and prioritize profitability.

“Most platforms are still manual or rules-based,” Kyle says. “We’re working toward fully autonomous, agentic SMS marketing that thinks and acts like a seasoned marketer without the overhead.”

This vision of AI-powered efficiency has allowed TxtCart to compete effectively with much larger, better-funded competitors. While others hire large customer success teams and account executives, TxtCart’s AI handles a lot of that work automatically.

The result is a business that’s not just profitable, but sustainably profitable. TxtCart doesn’t need to raise money to stay afloat or hit growth targets that satisfy investors. They just need to keep solving real problems for their customers.

Today, TxtCart is targeting $4 million in ARR, and with their current growth rate, this goal seems quite achievable. But Kyle’s focus isn’t solely on revenue numbers.

“We’re not just competing with the big players,” Kyle explains. “We’re redefining what SMS marketing can be for the thousands of growing brands that need these tools but can’t afford enterprise-level pricing or complexity.”

This mission to democratize enterprise-grade marketing tools for SMB brands is the driving force behind everything TxtCart does. It’s why they focus on performance-based pricing. It’s why they prioritize ease of use over feature complexity. And it’s why they’ve been able to build a successful business with a lean team.

The Blueprint for Bootstrapped Success

Kyle’s journey with TxtCart provides a blueprint that other entrepreneurs could follow. You don’t necessarily need millions in funding to build a successful SaaS business. You don’t need hundreds of employees to serve thousands of customers. What you do need is a focus on solving real problems for real people, and a disciplined approach to growth.

“You’ve got to make your own luck,” Kyle says. “And if you want to achieve something significant, you can’t be afraid to fail. Look for people who can help you, and don’t be afraid to ask for their support.”

In a world that often emphasizes unicorns and billion-dollar valuations, Kyle Bigley is showing that sometimes the path to success is less about chasing headlines and more about building a real business that solves real problems for real customers.

Press Contact:

• Kyle Bigley | Founder & CEO, TxtCart
• Email: kyle@txtcartapp.com
• Website: https://usetxtcart.io
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kylebigley
• X: x.com/kylebigley

Disclaimer: The financial performance and business results mentioned in this article are specific to TxtCart and may not be indicative of other businesses or startups in the same industry. The information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice or a guarantee of future results. Individual business performance can vary based on numerous factors.