That's my take too. Perhaps $80M for free organic users was a steal?

I do think credit is due to the founder, because he was able to single handedly build and market a valuable solution. That said, he also pushed code every day without code reviews. This is how you get technical debt and security vulnerabilities so fast.

For sure, shipping and iterating quickly to solve a problem people had vs just one's own vision and interpretation is really commendable.

The scary and exciting thing is it's still possible today with other needs.