Every founder knows the stories about quick wins and overnight success. Far fewer people talk about the years where nothing seems to work, the bank account is shrinking, and you feel like you are failing every single day.
This is the story behind that quieter reality.
In this post, we walk through how Godard Abel, cofounder and CEO of G2, went from nearly bankrupt with his first startup, BigMachines, to over $760 million in exits and building G2 into a unicorn. More important than the numbers, his journey shows how persistence and resilience, not just strategy, keeps a company alive when logic says it should be dead.
If you are building a SaaS company, or thinking about it, this is a grounded look at what it actually feels like to hang on long enough for the market to catch up.
Early Sparks of Entrepreneurship: From MIT to Silicon Valley
Roots at MIT and the first “almost” startup
Godard Abel did not start as a CEO. He started as an engineer at MIT, surrounded by smart friends and ambitious ideas.
One of those friends was Chris Schutz. Right out of MIT, the two of them started working on an idea in 3D printing. They came close to starting a company.
Then they got scared.
Like many first-time founders, they felt they “weren’t quite ready.” So Godard went to McKinsey to get real world experience and Chris took a job as an engineer.
The desire to build something never really left. It just went quiet for a while.
First dive into startups in 1998
The next big chapter came at Stanford Business School in 1998, right in the middle of the first internet boom.
Godard met two Stanford computer science students who were building a startup called Alonza. They were strong on code and weak on business, so he stepped in as the business guy, helping them turn the idea into a company.
Alonza was acquired by another startup, Niku, which later went public around March 2000 with a valuation reported at about $10 billion. The founder of Niku, Farzad Dibachi, had worked for Larry Ellison at Oracle. Watching him build a company at high speed was a glimpse into what was possible.
Key sparks for Godard in that period:
- Watching a young startup grow fast and then go public
- Feeling the energy in Silicon Valley as software companies like Google were getting started, witnessing groundbreaking innovations
- Realizing he loved being the business partner to strong technical founders
If you want a deeper look at his early path and mindset, his interview on building BigMachines and beyond gives more color.
Launching BigMachines in 2000
By 2000, Godard was ready to start his own company.
The idea was personal. His father ran a pump manufacturing company that sold very large, complex pumps. The vision for his new venture was simple to explain, but hard to pull off: help companies like his father’s sell their complex products online, similar to how Dell was selling PCs online at that time.
He was 27, confident, and surrounded by dot-com hype.
One of his very first investors was John Sculley, the former Apple CEO known as the man who fired Steve Jobs. With that validation, raising money was surprisingly easy. In the first year, his venture raised $20 million and grew from 2 people to about 70.
They thought they might go public in a year or two.
Then everything flipped.
The Dot-Com Bust: From Boom to Almost Zero
The sudden shift in 2001
In 2001, the dot-com bubble burst.
Investors who had been happy to fund almost anything related to the internet shut their wallets. Wall Street analysts even said Amazon might go bankrupt. People started calling the internet a fad, similar to how opinions swung about crypto years later.
For the startup, the timing was brutal.
Manufacturing clients who had been curious about selling online pulled back. They said they were fine sending catalogs and CD-ROMs. The big plans on paper did not match reality.
Their plan looked something like this:
- 2001: Sign 20 manufacturers
- 2002: Sign 40 manufacturers
- Actual result: In 2002 they signed only about 2 clients and by 2003 they had burned through $19 million of the $20 million they had raised
They were almost out of cash, almost out of options, and very close to shutting down.
The mistakes that set up the crisis
Looking back, Godard is clear about what went wrong in their talent strategy.
He spent money too fast before they had product-market fit. The company hired two VPs of Sales even though the product was not proven in the market and manufacturers were not yet lining up to buy. It should have still been founder-led selling.
Spending for a scaling business before finding real demand turned out to be a painful lesson. When the market turned, they had a large payroll, slow growth, and very little runway.
By 2003, they had about $1 million left in the bank. Raising more money was off the table. They had to grow organically or disappear.
The emotional toll of layoffs
Cutting from 70 people down to 20 was not a spreadsheet problem, it was an emotional one.
The team went through three rounds of layoffs. The CEO says those were his worst days leading the company. Letting the first person go, looking them in the eye and telling them they no longer had a job, felt horrible.
It did not get easier with more rounds. Even when it was clearly necessary to save the company, it still felt like a personal failure.
In that low point, he had to simplify what mattered:
“I just got to focus on the client, just win the next deal, make the next client happy.”
That became the new strategy.
Climbing Out: Profitability and Finally Finding Product-Market Fit
Focusing on customers to survive
After the layoffs, survival came down to one thing: cash from customers.
The goal was clear. Get profitable on the $1 million they had left. No more “grow at all costs,” no dreams of quick IPOs. Just win deals, make clients successful, and get to positive cash flow within a year.
They pulled it off.
Within about a year, the company became profitable. Early adopters were already getting results from the software. Some could create quotes about 80% faster and process orders online in real time. These early adopters kept Godard and his cofounder going.
They felt like they were stuck in the middle of the adoption curve that Geoffrey Moore describes in Crossing the Chasm. A dozen early adopters loved the product, but the mainstream market still did not get it.
It was painful, but it was progress.
The long road to product-market fit
True product-market fit did not arrive until 2007, about seven years into the journey.
For the first six years, the company missed its sales plan almost every year. He says he often felt like he was failing every day. The company was alive, but it did not feel like a winner.
The turning point came from smart partnerships.
The platform became a key Configure Price Quote (CPQ) tool that worked with CRM systems, positioning them as cloud CPQ pioneers. They partnered with Salesforce and Oracle CRM On Demand. When the CRM platform started selling into larger enterprises, clients like Ricoh needed CPQ as part of the deal.
In one deal, Ricoh told Salesforce they would only buy if Salesforce had a CPQ solution. The CRM platform brought the platform into the deal. That kind of “pull” from the ecosystem changed everything.
Signs that product-market fit had finally arrived:
- Inbound leads started coming from large companies
- Deals started closing faster than expected
- Growth tracked closely with the growth of big CRM platforms
The same product that had felt like a grind for six years suddenly became a must-have for many clients.
What kept them from quitting
With so much pain for so long, why did they keep going?
Two things stood out:
- Loyalty to each other: Godard and his cofounder Chris were best friends from MIT. They did not want to quit on each other. They had also recruited friends, which made the company feel like a shared responsibility.
- Early customers who believed: About a dozen early customers were getting strong results. They showed that the idea worked, even if the broader market was slow to catch up.
His advice from that period is simple and strong: don't quit if you truly believe in your vision and you have some happy customers. The market often takes longer than you expect, especially in B2B SaaS. That persistence and resilience carried them through.
In hindsight, he is grateful they did not walk away during those years when almost every day felt like failure.
Emotional Fortitude: The Real Edge For Founders
It is not just about being smart
People love to talk about the intellectual side of startups: strategy, market sizing, pricing models, product roadmaps.
Godard’s view is different. He believes the real edge for founders is emotional fortitude. You have to keep going through some deeply uncomfortable experiences: letting people go, losing deals, losing customers, and sometimes losing key team members.
He is a fan of Ben Horowitz’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which also focuses on this side of building companies. The hard part is not the theory. It is the days when you have to make choices that hurt, a process that demands conscious leadership to navigate the emotional toll.
Even today, losing a deal or a great employee still feels terrible to him.
But he has also learned that the highs are tied to the lows. Winning a big customer, recruiting an amazing teammate, or reaching a liquidity event feels more meaningful when you remember what it took to get there.
Growing as a founder over 25 years
After more than two decades building software companies, Godard has more perspective, shaped by frameworks like V2MOM that help align long-term vision with practical execution.
He chooses to do it. He is clear that I love building companies. When he is not building, he misses the challenge, the team, and the feeling of creating something useful.
The lows did not go away. They just feel more manageable now because he knows they are part of the cycle. For every low, there will be another high, as long as you are still in the game.
If you want to see how he frames this today, his LinkedIn profile as founder of G2 gives a simple snapshot of that long arc.
From Exit To G2: Solving His Own Pain
BigMachines exit and what came after
After finally finding product-market fit and scaling with CRM partners, the CPQ vendor grew into a strong business. After about 13 years, Oracle acquired the company in a deal reported at around $400 million.
On paper, it was a clear success.
At first, the liquidity felt euphoric. Godard made money, bought a bigger house, and many of his non-tech friends could not understand why he was not just “done.”
Inside, he was exhausted. Eleven years of grinding had caught up with him. He stayed on and worked with new investors for a while, but realized he did not enjoy that setup.
He took about a year off.
A few months into that break, his wife Stacy pointed out that he was not actually happy. He was supposed to be “set,” yet he missed working with a team and missed the daily challenge of building.
That was the moment he knew he was not finished as a founder.
The pain that inspired G2
During that journey, one big frustration kept showing up: validation.
They waited nine years to get into a Gartner report and 12 years to finally become a leader in their category. Gartner also had exclusion rules, like not covering vendors under a certain revenue threshold. That meant younger companies could not even appear on the radar, no matter how strong their products were.
Buyers struggled too. Some large companies spent years trying to build similar software in house because they could not easily discover better tools like theirs.
That experience raised a simple question: what if there was an easier way for buyers to find the best software, and for vendors to earn trust?
The idea behind G2 was to make the B2B buying journey feel more like shopping on Amazon. Anyone could:
- Visit a site
- See real-time peer reviews
- Compare products quickly
- Make a confident choice based on real user feedback
G2's Reviews and Research feature gathers that user feedback to help inform decisions. The name “G2” comes from a military term for intelligence. In the U.S. military, the general’s intelligence staff is called G2. “Give me the G2” means “give me the quick insight on what is happening.” That is exactly what they wanted to give software buyers.
G2 was built to scratch their own itch after more than 10 years of selling enterprise software the hard way. The G2 company newsroom bio describes how his earlier ventures like the CPQ vendor and SteelBrick led directly to this mission.
Early grind, slow flywheel, then rapid growth
The early days of G2 were not smooth either.
They started with one category: CRM software. It was the market they knew best from the CPQ vendor days. To get the first reviews, they set up a booth at Dreamforce, the huge Salesforce conference, and handed out $5 Starbucks gift cards to anyone willing to write a review of their CRM.
It was painfully manual. It also did not generate much revenue at first. Without enough reviews and without enough buyer traffic from Google, it was hard to make money. The pace was so slow that Godard went to build SteelBrick with another cofounder while Tim, his product cofounder, kept G2 moving forward.
Over time, they figured out how to tap into intrinsic motivation. Some people enjoy sharing their expertise and helping others choose better tools. Once G2 had enough reviews in CRM, they expanded into related categories like email marketing and marketing automation. Users who reviewed their CRM could also review their other tools.
That is when the network effect started to kick in.
Today, G2 has over 2.7 million software reviews and serves more than 100 million software buyers each year. They have over 3,600 paying customers (software vendors) and have proven the model globally, including a partner in Japan, itreview.jp, run with SoftBank.
The turning point for credibility came in 2017. Accel, a well known Silicon Valley venture firm, called them. Accel partners noticed that many portfolio founders were using their G2 ratings in investor pitch decks. At that time, G2 was doing about $5 million in ARR.
Godard was skeptical at first, assuming it might just be a casual outreach. Once he confirmed their interest, he realized something had changed. Investors could see the flywheel.
From there, G2 began doubling revenue almost every year, growing from about $5 million ARR to around $50 million ARR by 2021. That same year, G2 became a unicorn. Along the way, G2 helped define new categories like “conversational intelligence,” including those involving generative AI, and supported companies like Gong and Chorus as they grew into standout players, a story that gets expanded on in this long-form interview about building software companies.
Why G2 Matters To Founders
Discovery, validation, and a better way to grow
For most founders, the hardest part at the start is simple: nobody knows you exist.
You have no brand, no references, and no analyst coverage. You are trying to convince clients to trust you when they have never heard your name.
G2 helps solve two big problems at once:
- Discovery: When you build up strong reviews, buyers searching for B2B software on G2.com can find you. It becomes a very efficient channel for leads because buyers are already in “evaluation mode.”
- Validation: Instead of waiting years for a Gartner mention, you can earn G2 badges faster if your clients love you. Founders use those badges in sales decks, on websites, and in investor pitches, helping vendors build trust through proven credibility.
Investors watch too. Around 60 VC firms use G2 data to spot growth trends and promising products in enterprise technology. That means good performance on G2 can lead to more inbound interest from both clients and investors.
Godard often says he sees software entrepreneurs as his “brothers around the world.” G2 was built from that point of view: a tool he wishes he had when selling BigMachines and SteelBrick.
The network effect that keeps growing
Once a user leaves their first review on G2, they are more likely to review other tools they use. That simple pattern fuels a powerful flywheel:
- More reviews make a category more useful for buyers
- Better information pulls in more traffic
- More traffic attracts more vendors
- More vendors invest in gathering reviews
From a founder’s point of view, this can mean:
- Easier client acquisition once you rank well in your category
- Faster growth for new or emerging software categories, such as AI
- Global visibility without needing a big brand or PR machine
It took G2 a long time to get from $0 to $5 million ARR. The jump from $5 million to $50 million happened much faster once the flywheel was spinning and SaaS adoption exploded.
Timeless Advice For Founders: Believe, Persevere, and Adjust Smart
It takes longer than you think
Godard is honest about how long it usually takes.
BigMachines took about seven years to reach real product-market fit. G2 took about five. That is very different from stories like Facebook at Harvard, where everyone adopted the product almost overnight.
His view: in SaaS, it usually takes at least 2 to 3 years to reach solid product-market fit, and often longer. If you truly believe in your vision and you have some early users who are happy, you should expect a long push, not a quick win.
The market often catches up later than your original plan.
Pivoting vs. staying the course
A lot of founders talk about “pivoting” quickly. Godard takes a more patient approach.
For him, the key is founder-market fit. You should be solving a problem that you know deeply, ideally a pain you have felt yourself. That deep conviction, embodying the PEAK Entrepreneur mindset, makes it easier not to pivot too fast when things are hard.
At G2, they never pivoted away from the core idea that reviews would help software buyers and sellers connect better. They made thousands of small optimizations to improve review conversion, user flow, and category pages, but the core vision stayed the same.
He even says, “If you really believe in your vision, I would never pivot.”
Most of the work is in those thousands of small innovations and details that bring the vision to life, not in changing the vision itself.
Handling the hardest moments
The hardest moments in a startup are often emotional, not technical. You lose a big deal. A key hire quits. You have to do layoffs. It feels personal.
Godard’s experience suggests three practical moves:
- Raise some extra capital if you can, so you have buffer and do not need layoffs at the first sign of trouble. Consider accelerator programs like Techstars for additional support in securing those funds.
- Hire for productivity, especially early on, to support your scaling business. Try to make sure everyone you bring on can help drive revenue or clear paths to revenue.
- Keep going when it feels awful, as long as the vision still makes sense and clients are getting value.
Over time, you learn that the highs only show up if you are willing to live through the lows in between.
Also Read: Work 14 Hours Daily to Build Digital Humans with AI (Nico Christie's Startup Playbook)
Conclusion
The story of Godard Abel is not a fairy tale about instant success. It is a long climb, full of near misses, layoffs, anxiety, and years where the numbers did not match the dream.
What carried him through was not just insight or timing. It was the ability to keep going, to simplify the focus back to “make the next client happy,” and to hold on to a vision long enough for the market to agree.
If you are in a tough stretch with your own company, remember this: the market often rewards the trust in founders who are still standing when others give up. Your job is to stay in the game, keep your customers close, and keep adjusting the details without abandoning the core of what you believe.
The highs will not come without the lows. But if this story proves anything, it is that the lows do not have to be the end.
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