Meet Mike Ortner: Founder of Capterra

In 1999, Mike Ortner and his co-founder started Capterra, a B2B website focused on providing business owners with the information necessary to choose the best software possible for the task at hand.

Besides being listed on the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies in the US on 8 separate occasions and being featured in the Wall Street Journal, his company also won several “Best Places to Work” awards under his leadership. 

Beating the Valley of Death

But before Mike built a multi-million dollar business, his team struggled. For years. 

In the 1990s, Ortner worked at notable firms like Price Waterhouse and JP Morgan before settling at a tech company based near Washington, D.C.

That’s where Ortner started to realize something about the tech industry and especially B2B software. Namely—there’s a lot of it.

With a little research, Mike saw that on both the side of business owners looking for software AND the side of software companies trying to reach their target audience, the needs for validation were great. Great enough to start something. 

So Mike and his newly-formed team launched Capterra using a seed round of funding from close connections. It took them two years to get two paying customers.

After the dot-com crash of 2001, venture capitalists weren’t as interested in inexperienced internet-based entrepreneurs. So they went the bootstrapping route and eventually, it paid off big. 

Depite a rapidly growing user base, Capterra struggled in the “startup valley of death” for years as they worked to monetize the service. Eventually, they adopted a pay-per-click model that leveraged Google’s preference for websites with inbound links. 

They grew exponentially. Under Mike’s leadership, Capterra eventually boasted a staggering $1M in revenue per employee. 

Values First 

But what is more staggering is that Mike accomplished all of this while promoting a healthy work-life balance mentality in his company culture. Capterra firmly operated by the belief that work does not equal life.  

“We won numerous best-places-to-work awards that celebrated the freedom-loving culture that we had built to focus everyone’s efforts on merely doing great work.” - Mike Ortner 

Exiting 

In 2015, Capterra was acquired by Gartner for $206.2M. Since then, Mike has been able to devote more time to his family and has served on the board of several organizations, such as the Religious Freedom Institute and the Classical Learning Test.

In 2021, he founded b.school, a 7-week “business bootcamp” for liberally educated individuals. 

Mike Ortner’s journey embodies what we mean at SENT Ventures by “grow, don’t grind.” By sticking to his values, continually improving and patiently placing trust in God, Mike grew his business from the ground up. 

That’s why we’re thrilled to have Mike speak at the SENT Summit this April. March 20th is the final deadline for Summit ticket sales. 

If you’re a Catholic business leader, the SENT Summit 2023 is an event you won’t want to miss.