SAAS Operators Podcast E12: From Near-Death to $10,000,000 with Stephen Hakami
In this episode of the SaaS Operators Podcast, we sat down with Stephen Hakami, the founder of Wiza, to talk about his journey bootstrapping Wiza to $10M+ ARR and what happens when you hit an inflection point. Stephen shares why he's now considering raising capital after years of profitable growth, and has shifted from a profit-first mindset to a platform play that focuses on enterprise value. We dig into the tradeoffs between bootstrapping vs. venture scaling, the importance of retention metrics, and why gross logo retention tells a deeper story. Stephen also opens up about a near-death moment for the company when his sole developer passed away suddenly, leaving the entire product in limbo. The episode ends with a broader look at enterprise value, multi-product strategy, and the real meaning of resilience in SaaS.
From Bootstrapped to $10M+ ARR, and the Near Death Moment That Changed Everything
Most founders don’t fully internalize what “key man risk” means until it happens to them.
Stephen Hakami did.
He built Wiza, a SaaS tool helping sales teams find contact data, from scratch. Bootstrapped it to over $10 million ARR. And nearly lost it all in a way you couldn’t script. The entire company was built on code written by one developer. A developer Stephen never spoke to in person. A developer who suddenly stopped replying. A few weeks later, Stephen found out he had died.
The Bootstrap Years
Wiza started in 2019. Stephen’s background was in sales, and his first software idea was called Torch, a tool that pinged you when you forgot to follow up on cold emails. He made every mistake: added too many features, dropped prices too fast, lost product focus. Torch flopped. But the seed was there.
With Wiza, the bet was clearer. Sales teams need better contact data. It’s a massive market, filled with bloated incumbents and mediocre products. Stephen kept it lean. Profitable from day one. Product-led growth. $50 to $100 per month users. No sales team, no outside capital.
And then it grew. Fast.
The Shift: From Profit to Platform
For the first five years, the mindset was profit. Build something good. Don’t overspend. Grow slowly and steadily.
Now, Stephen’s thinking bigger. And for good reason. His competitors are worth billions. He knows the opportunity in front of him is huge, but to fully go after it, it might be time to play a different game.
Bootstrapping forces you to optimize for margin. Venture funding forces you to optimize for market dominance. Different rules. Different scoreboard. But if you’re serious about building a platform, not just a tool, you can’t ignore it forever.
Still, he’s not all-in yet. The channel is proven, the sales team is working, and the product has repeatable traction. The question now is whether adding fuel will compound the fire or create distraction.
The Existential Moment
Three years into Wiza, they hit $3 million ARR. Business was booming. But under the hood, things were fragile. He only had one developer and all the code lived on his machine in Morocco.
Then he got sick.
Stephen started getting messages like, “I’m in the hospital, just reboot the server if something breaks.”
The app started going down. Daily. Stephen was carrying his laptop around the city in case he needed to restart AWS on the fly.
Then the developer went silent.
For 30 days, nothing. No messages. No response. Until an Instagram DM from someone with the same last name said “Are you his business partner?”
Stephen’s heart sank.
Turns out the developer had died. The app, the product, the business, all of it, was locked on his laptop.
This was the moment. The company might be gone. No backups. No team that could take over. Just one last shot: a friend of a friend who happened to know a talented developer. He managed to retrieve the code, uncompressed, by some miracle, and saved the company.
That dev is now Wiza’s CTO.
Playing a New Game
Stephen came out the other side of that story with a different view. Profit is good, but there’s something more exciting about chasing scale. His mindset now is less about how much money he’s personally making and more about what the business could become.
He’s still on the fence about fundraising. But even going through the motions has forced a more mature operating lens. Retention, customer fit, expansion potential. These things get glossed over when you’re chasing cashflow, but they become central when you’re building for enterprise value.
And he’s thinking multi-product. Wiza today sells contact data. But to raise capital and compete with the Apollos and ZoomInfos of the world, it will need to become a suite. Automations. AI SDRs. Workflows. That’s the future.
Why This Matters
Everyone in SaaS faces this question eventually. Are you optimizing for a lifestyle business or a legacy business? Do you want to stay lean and independent or raise capital and swing big?
Stephen’s story is a reminder that either path is fine, but you better know which game you’re playing.
And whichever game you’re in, you better back up your damn code.
