After graduating in the doldrums of a downturn in 2009, the world didn't present very many open doors to Andy Josuweit.
At first, he couldn't find a job after college. Then, after an internship providing micro-financing to women in Africa, he still couldn't get a job. Then, a friend who was also studying abroad called him up with the idea of starting a software development business.
“Neither of us knew anything about software development,” Josuweit told me.
But they learned and hustled. It wasn't Josuweit's first rodeo. He grew up with entrepreneurial parents who owned a small packaging business. He started a landscaping business with a truck and basic tools at age 16. He watched his clothing startup fail in college.
"No investors would really talk to us. But we didn’t get distracted… and we didn’t play into the Silicon Valley mentality."
What Josuweit did was tackle a problem he knew: student loans. As a jobless graduate, he had more than a dozen loans out and, even though he had a business education, he couldn't find any easy way to manage the financial pain. That led him to start Student Loan Hero. Today, that business was acquired by LendingTree, the online loan business, for $60M.
Student Loan Hero has a variety of tools to help students manage debt, but it is in many ways buoyed by a steady stream of high-ranking content that helps people deal with their loans.
Josuweit and his two fellow co-founders had bootstrapped the company since its founding in 2012. So, aside from a small stake from an investor in New York, this exit primarily benefits five primary shareholders. That's a bit of a rarity in startup land where many new companies give away major stakes in their companies to investors in exchange for big investments to help them grow.
Josuweit, who grew up in Pennsylvania, said venture capital wasn't a primary focus -- profit was -- and that VCs didn't give them many openings.
"I kind of felt like the ugly stepchild," he said. "No investors would really talk to us. But we didn’t get distracted… and we didn’t play into the Silicon Valley mentality.”
After launching the business in San Diego, Student Loan Hero joined the Startup Chile incubator, which provided $40,000 in equity free funding. The company's team works mostly remotely, with writers, developers and managers working in various cities. After moving to New York City, Josuweit decided to move to Austin for a better work-life balance and more proximity to nature.
He said Student Loan Hero focused on doubling its business each year, and they were successful at doing so, Josuweit said, noting he couldn't share exact figures.
“We’ve just been heads down and kind of grinding away," he said. "We don’t show up on a lot of radars for investors because we haven’t raised a lot of capital.”
Josuweit said he's excited to learn from LendingTree, which was also founded by an entrepreneur whose own experience guided his way to launching a business.
"We have a similar origin story," he said. "I think there are a lot of shared values."
