He bootstrapped a startup from 0 to $2M with no tech background. How?

Working as an editor-in-chief in a small college newspaper Nick Freiling did not see himself as a founder of a startup with $2M revenue. But that’s exactly who he’s now.

Photo by Ana Municio on Unsplash

Nick — is a 100% non-techie. After getting his bachelor degree in economics (and freelancing all the way through college for the local newspaper) he landed on a pretty boring 5/2 job: office hours, sorting his boss’s emails, scheduling meetings. The only consolation was that the company he worked for was doing something truly impactful — creating employment opportunities for Pennsylvanians with disabilities. Nick was passionate about the social aspect of his job and never missed a chance to mention it. It paid off. One day his boss gave Nick an assignment that went far beyond the assistant’s job description — to conduct an independent market research for conceptual programs. This was the beginning of his true love. Market analysis became a new obsession for Nick that he tried to fulfil by writing articles for investment advisory firms and joining a professional market research provider.

Passionate about people

But it was not the scope to satisfy his ambition. Though Nick felt that he was doing the right thing and was definitely following his true passion, still something was amiss. One day, in 2016 he found out what that was.

Basically, by an accident, as Nick’s boss was out of the office, he had to hop on a call with a customer. One thing led to another — and Nick ended up creating the proposal, presenting it and closing the deal. He was extatic — it turned out that he was not such an introvert as he considered himself to be. He actually enjoyed interacting with customers and closing the deal.

For a couple of more months Nick was hesitant but finally decided to make. He figured out he knew enough about market research to start his own company, he had two credit cards and a cheap Asus laptop — what else would you need to start a bootstrapped startup?! That’s how People Fish — a platform providing market research services for startup founders — was born.

He had two credit cards and a…