How I built these companies

This newsletter is about to hit 40,000 subscribers.

In the early days, most people on this list knew me personally. With our new growth rate, it occurred to me that many of you don't know me or the story of how I got here.

This is a good time to reintroduce myself to this list and tell you my story.

I’m Jesse. I was born and raised in St. Louis, MO USA.

My parents were immigrants from India. My dad is an entrepreneur, and my mom is a teacher.

I like to think of myself as both.

I was entrepreneurial from the start: selling popcorn tins door-to-door, shoveling snow in middle school, and DJing in high school.

In my sophomore year of high school, my English teacher said, “You seem bright. What do you want to do with your life?”

I said, "Business."

She stared me dead in the eye and said, “Wharton. You want to go to Wharton. It's the best business school. Now work your ass off to get in.”

I followed her advice and I GOT IN.

But I kept working my ass off.

During my summers, I interned on Wall Street, and during the school year, I started businesses: T-shirts, a high school social network, etc.

I also met two guys who became my best friends and cofounders.

After I graduated, I worked in management consulting at McKinsey and then on Wall Street with Goldman.

In my heart, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but my head told me to go work at these fancy companies and see what they were all about. I did, and liked them, but they were not my dream.

In 2010, in the middle of the financial crisis, I moved to California on a dime to start Ampush.

The name is the first two letters of the founders' last names. Chris (AM)os, Jesse PU(jji), and Nick (SH)ah.

We didn’t know anything other than we wanted to learn a ton and give ourselves time to figure things out. So we committed 2 years to making this work and bootstrapped to give flexibility.

Friends and mentors suggested digital performance marketing, and we quickly realized it is the “spinal cord” of the internet: publishers make all their $ from it and advertisers get all their customers from it.

We started experimenting with Google Ads, email, and display.

Right around this time… Facebook launched their “self-serve” ad platform with “likes and interest” targeting.

We were making 5-10% margins on Google. Within weeks, we started making 75% margins on Facebook.

In June of 2010, we were doing $100k in monthly revenue. By August of 2011, we were doing $2 MILLION in monthly revenue.

The following month, at 27, I married my soulmate Deepika, who I started dating at 16!

Then Facebook called us: “Who the hell are you guys? You’re one of our top 100 advertisers! Come meet us.”

Within months, we were one of the first 10 companies to receive an invitation into Facebook’s ad developer ecosystem.

We started a new business, “Ampush Social” in 2012, and we were a “Most Favored Nation” company that they gave special access and leads to.

All our early customers were startups at the time, but today you know their names: Uber, Dollar Shave Club, Peloton, Blue Apron, Clash of Clans, and many, many more.

Seeing this opportunity, we divested the initial performance marketing business and went all in on Ampush Social!

By 2015, we had ~$500M in annual ad spend and ~200 employees.

But we were tired and ready to exit. We took the business out for a sale process, but ended up with numbers below our expectations. (We were hoping for 9 figures and got 8 figures.)

Crestfallen, we decided not to sell but partnered with and sold a minority stake to Red Ventures (the most interesting company no one has ever heard of).

It was my first “liquidity event.” It was life-changing.

They took our fast-growing but not super-profitable company and taught us how to make money.

We learned a ton about culture, client relationships, people development, selling, and everything else from Ric and the RV team.

That was also the year my first child (son, Ricky) was born! I felt a lot of gratitude for being an entrepreneur who achieved some success.

It allowed me to shape my schedule and have enough resources not to worry.

In 2017, my daughter Serena was born. Around that time, Red Ventures told us they would NOT be buying the rest of the company.

This sent me into a tailspin. I was unmotivated, burnt out, and stuck in a rut.

For 6 months, I didn’t go into work until 11 am and left a 4 pm. I had no idea what was next and questioned everything.

Ric suggested I hire a coach.

I started working with Dave Kashen, and it has been life-changing.

He helped me

1. Understand how much I used fear and external success to motivate myself and why that was not sustainable

2. Build self-awareness in the moment to know what was driving me and why

3. Most importantly, to identify and be purposeful about my WHY.

No words can truly describe the impact of the journey he sent me on, but it has made me a better husband, father, entrepreneur, and person.

My WHY is to help others learn and grow to be the best versions of themselves.

I discovered a love of:

1. Coaching/teaching others

2. The entrepreneurial process, especially the -6 to +12 months of a startup's journey. Finding the opportunity, getting an initial plan down, putting people in place and figuring out how to make it work.

With this clarity, I realized I couldn’t fully live my WHY inside of Ampush, so I transitioned out as CEO in 2020.

I also moved my family back home to St. Louis. We think it's one of the best, family-friendly cities in America.

2.5 years later, we sold Ampush to Tinuiti with an amazing outcome for everyone!

After some time off, I started working on Gateway X. It is for me to live my WHY every day.

The format that seemed the best fit was a venture studio meets a holdco. I have a huge list of ideas, find founder/CEO partners who are interested in building them with me, fund them, and dive in to both build the business and coach the CEO.

The 3 “unique” aspects of Gateway X have been:

1. Growth Marketing - we want an unfair advantage and unique insight into every idea. So Growth Marketing is at the core of each business… either as the unfair advantage itself or part of the product/service.

2. Bootstrapped Giants - the “format” of every business is what I call a bootstrapped giant. What that means is: we expect them to get profitable in the first year and grow profitably at a high linear growth rate.

3. Culture - the companies share a lot of common cultural elements vis-à-vis talent, a focus on developing people, using the conscious leadership group’s systems, and what I call “entrepreneurial rigor.”

Since 2021, we’ve launched 5.5 companies:

High-quality Global marketing talent for startups, brands, and agencies. It is >$20M ARR, profitable, and growing.

A supplement on the market to address IBS and bloating. I’ve written about its problems in past newsletters.

Consulting firm helping Private Equity firms evaluate and build digital marketing capabilities of their portfolio companies. In 100 days, we hit profitability.

Software to make the Shopify ecommerce experience look/feel more like TikTok and Instagram. We have shut down Kahani.

The company behind the newsletter you’re reading now.

And the “half” is many of the companies that died on the launch pad.

My plan has been to launch ~1 new company a year and pour all our energy into getting it to sustainable, profitable growth, while the CEO then takes it forward.

But last year, I decided not to launch a company in 2025. Since then, I’ve been considering buying companies.

I hope Gateway X is regarded as the “McKinsey of Entrepreneurship” - where young people go to learn to be entrepreneurs and actually start new companies.

I hope we re-imagine work and success as not only achieving great things and making money, but also uplifting people and helping them learn and grow along the way.

In 2023, we were blessed with our 3rd child, Mila.

Besides spending time with my family, I love traveling, playing tennis, dark chocolate, and spirituality.

Thanks for reading - my goal with content is to inspire other entrepreneurs, especially bootstrapped ones, to learn and grow personally.

I want to help create great leaders who build long-term, profitable businesses. And enjoy the ride.

That’s me. I always like hearing about you, too. Hit reply and tell me. Really.

jesse