🚀 Inside HighLevel: Co-Founder Reveals 4 Years of Failure Before Success
The untold story of building a billion-dollar platform, living off your wife's income, and the 12-day difference between having a baby and making your first real sale
💡 The Journey You Never Heard About
Everyone knows HighLevel as the all-in-one marketing platform that's taking over the agency world. But what most people don't know is that co-founders Varun and Shaun spent four years building failed products before they created HighLevel.
"Both of us were living off our wives," Varun admits candidly. "My wife paid my bills for a long time. His wife paid his bills for a long time. My wife was incredibly supportive on day one. And by year four, she did start asking me if I was just watching Netflix at home."
With their first child on the way, the pressure was mounting. Varun's wife gave him an ultimatum: "Now's the time. If you're going to start making money, you either have to go back to a job or start making money with this company because we're having a child and it's time."
What happened next was nothing short of miraculous timing.
🎯 From Invoicing Apps to Job Dispatching: The Failed Products
Before HighLevel, Varun and Shaun tried everything. Their goal was simple: as long as we can pay two salaries and we don't have to work for anyone else, we're successful.
Failed Product #1: Invoicing App
Built for SMBs (plumbers, electricians)
Tried to monetize credit card payments—failed because businesses didn't want chargeback risk
Tried to charge for the app—no one pays for mobile apps
Result: A year and a half thrown away
Failed Product #2: Job Dispatching Software
Targeted HVAC teams with multiple trucks
Built calendars, booking, mobile app, web app—everything
Problem: These businesses weren't online looking for solutions
Required cold calling, demos, 12-18 month payback period
Would need massive capital to compete with Service Titan (who had raised $1 billion)
Result: Another six months wasted
They also built: ✅ Prosper MD ✅ Service ProMax ✅ Multiple other products that never gained traction
But here's what they gained: They got really good at building software. Their technology choices improved, their ability to pivot got better, and their speed increased dramatically.
🎨 The Moment Everything Changed
Through all the failed products, they had picked up a few scattered customers—one here, one there. One of those customers was a med spa.
While building review management software (because businesses kept telling them they just wanted more sales, not operational efficiency), the med spa owner said something that changed everything:
"I don't know how to put the reviews widget on my site. You should talk to the marketing agency."
That agency was Robin, and when he jumped on the call, Varun noticed something different:
"He did not have any questions about how to do things. He understood the software inside out. And his question was, 'Can I buy this for all of my customers?'—which was about 80 or so."
80 sales in one go was a huge deal for a company that had been making one or two sales at a time.
Then Robin said the magic words: "I have 10 other friends who run digital marketing agencies. Can I bring them in?"
📈 The Avalanche Begins
Those 10 friends bought it for all their customers. Then one of them—Rob Bailey—invited them to speak at his mastermind event with 40 agencies. They got another 40 clients from that event alone.
And then it went word of mouth.
There was just one small problem with timing: Rob Bailey's event was 12 days after Varun's first son was born.
"If that didn't happen, I would have probably had to go back to work," Varun reflects.
🏗️ The Three Features That Made HighLevel Unique
When those first 40 agencies from Rob Bailey's event started signing up, they all said something similar:
"I like all of this, but we're selling other platforms today. I would prefer not to tell my clients it's a different platform because the minute they know what software it is, they're probably going to cancel with me and go direct."
These agencies understood something critical: They were the ones bringing the value, not the software alone.
This led to the creation of HighLevel's three most differentiating features:
🎨 White Label
Agencies could brand the platform as their own
Clients wouldn't know what software it was
Prevented clients from going direct to the platform
📁 Sub Accounts
Agencies manage multiple clients
Easy switching between client accounts
Each client has their own environment
📸 Snapshots
For all dental clients, the setup is similar
Just a few variables change
Quick customization with global values
"I think everything beyond that came from watching people sell as SaaS, which is why we added in the SaaS mode and SaaS-preneur. All of these lessons are coming from the agencies. It's never us figuring out the magic and then going to the agencies and telling them how to do it. It's always them coming and telling us how they have figured it out."
💪 Building a Team That Stays
One of the most remarkable aspects of HighLevel's growth? Everyone Varun hired in the first two years is still with the company.
"As far as engineering teams go, one thing that's been incredibly fun is to build the culture and the team because no one has left, which is an anomaly compared to most companies."
His secret? Hiring entrepreneurs.
"One thing that we've always looked at when we're hiring people is finding people with an entrepreneurial bent because we've noticed that people who have been entrepreneurs in the past can just take a problem statement and run towards an outcome versus people that are used to being told what to do."
He also emphasizes hiring people who can: ✅ Deal with ambiguity ✅ Stay positive in challenging situations ✅ See the glass half full ✅ Think like a founder
🔮 The Big Shift: From Bottom-Up to Top-Down Strategy
For years, HighLevel operated with each team dictating their own roadmap. It led to incredible innovation and speed, but it also created fragmentation.
"Previously, it was each person and each team being independent and being able to run by themselves without having to worry about the other teams," Varun explains.
But now, they're flipping the model.
The new approach: 🎯 Company-wide strategy alignment 🔄 Teams working together on integration 📊 Focus on completeness, not just new features ⚡ Emphasis on stability and performance
"What everyone's now asking for is maturity. They're asking for stability. They're asking for performance. They're asking for predictability. And they're asking for completeness."
Examples of this shift: ✅ Media library now works across all features ✅ Custom fields integrating with workflows, documents, funnels ✅ Better coordination between product areas
💰 The Truth About Private Equity and Pricing
There's been talk in the community about how HighLevel's investment changed the company's approach to pricing. Varun sets the record straight:
"The reality is between Shaun, Robin, and me, we still very much run the company day-to-day. We're on calls every day. We're making all of the decisions ourselves. The amount of time our board spends telling us what to do is little to none."
What actually happened with pricing? They hired lots of product managers and engineers, gave them different focus areas, and asked them to make more money for the company—which led to fees on various features.
"Now we just had to switch it. We were like, okay, now hold on, our customers are feeling like we're putting a toll on every gate. Let's pull this back and let's relook at this."
Big changes announced: ✅ Some existing charges will go away completely ✅ GPT action pricing dropped to 5% cheaper than OpenAI (not just base level—actually cheaper) ✅ New workflow automation plans for heavy users ✅ More competitive pricing across the board
🎓 Advice for New HighLevel Users
When asked what he'd tell someone just starting with HighLevel, Varun's answer was clear:
"Focus on making that first sale and try to make that first sale as uncomplicated as possible."
The biggest challenge? New users feel like they need to understand the entire platform before they can sell anything.
"If you try to build everything, learn everything, then you're also trying to sell everything. Your implementation becomes more expensive, your sales pitch becomes more complicated. I think it just leads to disaster."
His recommendation:
🎯 Pick ONE tool (Voice AI, reviews, chat widget) 📞 Go sell that one thing to a few businesses 🚪 Use it as a foot in the door ➕ Add more services as you grow the relationship
"Hey, I've got the voice AI done for you. How about we set up conversation AI? How about we set up automatic review requests? I think you need to edge in piece by piece."
For those struggling:
"Everyone struggles at the beginning. You're not any different than anyone else. It's just you have to get over that initial learning curve, that initial hump."
His additional advice: 🤝 Get help from the community 📚 Don't try to learn everything ⚡ Learn what you need when you need it 🚀 Get your first client—nothing motivates like having a paying customer
"I built a ManyChat bot for someone before I knew ManyChat. I told him, 'Yeah, I can build you a chatbot.' Then I had to go figure it out. I figured it out."
🌍 The Vision: The Next Five Years
"The opportunity is much larger than we initially even anticipated," Varun shares.
After traveling to Australia and the UK for SaaSpreneur events, they realized how much potential exists globally. They learned that:
🇦🇺 Australia: People love buying from local teams 🇬🇧 UK: VAT and tax requirements need proper handling 🏥 Healthcare: Local data residency is critical
The bigger vision:
"We can be the AI business operating system for all small business. And whether it's moving them off of Excel, moving them off of other platforms, or moving them off of HubSpot or Salesforce, I think the potential is large."
What makes HighLevel different? The go-to-market model.
"To win in the SMB market, you should not be trying to go at it direct. You should be going at it through your partners. Microsoft did it with things like Excel. This was known, but somehow with SaaS, everyone just missed that piece."
Coming soon: 🏢 HighLevel Innovation Hub in Dubai 👥 30-40 product and engineering leadership stationed there 🔄 Rotating teams working in-person for one month at a time 📈 Better alignment and quality standards
They're also implementing a new release framework where instead of 15 releases hitting production daily, one tested release goes out every few days—catching issues before they affect customers.
🎯 The Bottom Line
HighLevel wasn't an overnight success. It was four years of failure, multiple pivots, living off spousal income, and being 12 days away from having to get a regular job.
But it was also about listening to customers, building what they actually needed, and empowering agencies to bring value to their clients.
The platform exists today not because the founders had a brilliant idea, but because they were willing to fail repeatedly, stay humble enough to let agencies tell them what to build, and create a model where success comes through partners rather than direct sales.
As Varun puts it: "All of these lessons are coming from the agencies. It's always them coming and telling us how they have figured out to get our product to more people, and it's us just obeying them."
🔗 Get Started Today
Join the Level Up Your SaaS Facebook Group: leadjennautomations.com/levelupyoursaas
Start an extended trial of HighLevel: https://www.gohighlevel.com/jenna-leadingham
Already a HighLevel user? Upgrade to Pro here: http://leadjennautomations.com/upgrade
