Papertrail sells to SolarWinds

My friends Troy and Eric just sold their bootstrapped Seattle startup, Papertrail, to SolarWinds in an all-cash deal. Says Troy:

By not trying to build a large business — and simply trying to deliver an amazing experience to every customer and sweat the details — we built a large business. No shortcuts, just hard work.

For me, Papertrail is an ideal startup success story. Troy and Eric built a product that elegantly solved an important infrastructure problem. They found great customers and scaled to meet demand. They never had to raise money and today they’ve had a well-deserved exit.

They did it their way. Cheers to that, guys!