"I met my business partner Mitch in an IRC chat room." Eddie Machaalani reflects on an unconventional start to a billion-dollar partnership.

The Immigrant Founder

"My parents immigrated from Lebanon, and we were able to succeed and do really well in Australia because of the ability to start and grow a small business. So initially, I just wanted to help small businesses go online."

Scratching His Own Itch

"I started as a web designer back in 2001-2002. In the early days, the biggest demand I was getting was the ability to update websites. I went looking for a CMS and couldn't find anything, so I built one."

The Product Factory

Before BigCommerce, Eddie and Mitch built many products: "We launched an email marketing platform, multiple content management platforms, knowledge-base software, analytics software, you name it, we did it."

"We were making a few million bucks a year and were very profitable. No outside funding. We were accidentally using the Lean Startup methodology."

Customer-Driven Development

"We had a website forum and a bunch of customers. These customers would tell us what they needed. At a certain point, all of them were hounding us to build a 'shopping cart.'"

The Reid Hoffman Moment

"When BigCommerce got to 300 people I stopped having fun. My passion was working directly with customers and working on product, with small teams." Eddie hired a CEO and stepped back - BigCommerce went public in 2020 at a $4.6B valuation.