Laura Roeder wasn’t chasing Silicon Valley unicorns. At 22, she just wanted the freedom to work on her own terms. No VCs. No 100-hour weeks. No suits.

Armed with web design skills she picked up in junior high and a deep dive into The 4-Hour Workweek, she quit her job cold and went all-in as a freelancer. Her first year? $30K. Her second? $60K. Not glamorous, but it was hers. And it worked.

But Laura didn’t stop at solo gigs. She noticed her small-business clients struggling with social media. So she built courses. Then, she built software. In 2014, she launched MeetEdgar—a content-scheduling tool that practically ran itself. Within 11 months, Edgar crossed $100K in monthly recurring revenue. All bootstrapped. All without burning out.

By 2021, Laura sold her SaaS for a seven-figure sum, fundraising, or blitz-scaling. Just systems, smart marketing, and a commitment to designing life around freedom.

Today, she’s building again—this time with Paperbell, a platform for coaches. Still bootstrapped. Still remote. Still life-first.

For Laura, the priority has always been clear: freedom. Freedom to work when she wants. Freedom to travel with her family. Freedom to step back without the sky falling. Her businesses aren’t built for external applause. They’re built to protect the life she wants to live.

This is the story of Laura Roeder—and her playbook for building sustainable, fulfilling, and wildly profitable companies without losing your mind (or your passport).

From Cold Quit to First Clients: Betting on Herself

Laura’s pivot from service to product didn’t happen in a co-working brainstorm or at some euphoric founder retreat. It came from something far less glamorous: exhaustion.

Between 2008 and 2014, she built a solid income stream teaching entrepreneurs how to master social media through online courses—back when “info products” were still mailed-in DVDs or password-protected WordPress pages. Laura had hit six figures teaching others how to batch content, organize status updates into categories, and recycle posts to stay visible without burning out.

But ironically, she was burning out.

MeetEdgar actually came directly from a course she was teaching people to do manually, what Edgar does for you automatically.

At some point, it hit her: if she had to teach one more person how to repurpose content using a spreadsheet, she might lose her mind.

That was the spark.

Finding MeetEdgar

Instead of teaching it again, she would build it.
Enter Chris, her soon-to-be husband, and also a talented software developer.

Together, they transformed her frameworks into a product: MeetEdgar. The idea was simple but powerful. Help solo entrepreneurs automate their social media presence by storing updates in a categorized library and automatically reposting them on a schedule. 

No more blank content calendars. No more guesswork. Just a self-replenishing feed of your best material.

Smart. Lean. Zero fluff.

They launched in 2014, fully bootstrapped. No pitch decks, no Silicon Valley pressure, no hockey-stick dreams. Just a clear pain point and a beautifully efficient solution.

And it took off like wildfire.

With Laura’s existing audience of course buyers and freelancers, plus a strong content marketing game, Edgar hit $100K MRR within 11 months. That’s $1.2M ARR in Year One—a mind-blowing number for a two-person, self-funded startup.

But what made MeetEdgar special wasn’t just the traction—it was the timing.

Laura launched Edgar while pregnant.

Developing A Lifestyle and The Product

Three months later, with a newborn at home, she went on maternity leave, and the business kept running. No hustle, no all-nighters. The systems she built and the team she carefully curated carried the weight.

“Everyone should be pregnant when they launch a startup,” she joked later, referring to how it forced her to build in automation and remove herself from the center of the business.

Because Laura wasn’t just building a product—she was designing a lifestyle.

MeetEdgar didn’t need her to hover. It had recurring revenue, an evergreen marketing funnel, and a product that truly solved a problem. The tool earned while she napped. Or traveled. Or raised her family.

That’s what she means by a “life-first business.”
Not passive income fantasy, but thoughtful, high-leverage systems that buy your freedom.

If most SaaS founders try to scale to infinity, Laura focused on scaling herself out. Out of daily ops. Out of the client hamster wheel. Out of the cycle of selling time for money.

She once said, “Software is always going to be cheaper than man-hours.” Edgar proved that, line by line of code.

When Laura first said this, she was talking about systems, automation, and scaling smart. But in the age of AI, the quote hits harder. 

Today, software doesn’t just automate—it thinks, writes, designs, and decides. What used to take teams can now be done with tools. For founders like Laura, who optimize for freedom, AI is the ultimate leverage. 

And unlike many founders who chase growth until burnout, Laura chose a different path: sustainable success. 

Scaling and Selling MeetEdgar

Over the next 7 years, MeetEdgar continued growing. Laura hired full-time staff when needed, but always kept a lean mindset. By 2021, she purposely slimmed operations down to a skeleton crew – one part-time developer and two part-time support contractors – putting the company into “maintenance mode” without hurting revenue. 

The recurring-subscription model made this possible: once Edgar had a solid customer base, it kept paying the bills without constant marketing expense. As Roeder explains, she realized that once she no longer needed the income, she should ask, “What are you getting from [the business]? … enjoyment, learning, fulfillment.”

In late 2021, Laura and Chris decided it was time to cash in on the hard work. She had brought MeetEdgar to “ramen profitable” stability and wanted to devote her attention to the next challenge. 

So, at the end of 2021, they sold MeetEdgar for a life-changing seven-figure sum.

Rather than dramatically doubling down on growth beforehand, Laura leveraged her tribe and content: as she noted in an interview, she even cold-emailed potential acquirers to find the right buyer for MeetEdgar. The deal let her step back financially, giving her the freedom to plot a new path.

A Smarter Second Act: Building Paperbell

After selling MeetEdgar, Laura didn’t retire. She redirected.

She had quietly begun building Paperbell in 2020, a streamlined software platform built specifically for coaches. The tool takes care of scheduling, payments, contracts, and client management—all in one place. Think of it as a virtual office for life coaches.

True to form, she bootstrapped the entire project. There was no pitch deck, no investor meetings. Just paying customers. By early 2022, Paperbell was already bringing in six figures annually—proof that there was product-market fit before she went all in.

This time, she made the process even leaner. No full-time employees. Just a sharp team of freelancers and contractors. She tossed out everything from the MeetEdgar playbook that felt like busywork, keeping only the parts that brought joy and momentum.

Even the marketing strategy has evolved. Paperbell wasn’t solving a well-defined problem; people were already Googling. It had to educate the market first. So Laura returned to her roots: content marketing. 

She focused on helping coaches through valuable, targeted resources, the same strategy that helped MeetEdgar scale past $100K MRR.

The outcome? A product that runs without hand-holding. A team that’s agile. And a business that’s as light and flexible as the founder behind it.

Conclusion: How Laura Built Around Her Life, Not Against It

Underneath all the product launches, client calls, and million-dollar milestones lies Laura Roeder’s simplest advantage: clarity. She knew what she wanted, and she designed everything—business, schedule, systems—to support that.

Her approach starts with an audacious premise: you only get what you go for. Laura didn’t wait to be qualified. She applied to speak at SXSW while still new in her field. She pitched herself for opportunities others assumed were off-limits, like high-profile panels or policy discussions. And she kept doing it. No gatekeepers. No permission slips. Just strategic boldness.

But ambition alone didn’t drive her—it was ambition with boundaries. Laura rejected the hustle cult of Silicon Valley early. 

While others bragged about sleepless nights and burnout rates, she built Edgar and Paperbell to run without her. Her definition of winning wasn’t a unicorn valuation—it was a quiet morning with her family while the revenue kept flowing.

Automation wasn’t just a productivity hack. It was philosophy. She looked for ways to replace herself at every turn—not because she didn’t care, but because she cared enough to let go. Edgar’s evergreen content engine ran on systems. 

Paperbell’s freelance team model meant no pressure to scale headcount. And across both businesses, she invested in SEO and slow-burn content instead of chasing noisy product launches.

In this way, Laura’s mindset was her moat. She treated "enjoyment, learning, and fulfillment" as KPIs—choosing long-term satisfaction over short-term sprints. Her freedom-first operating system became both filter and compass: if it didn’t feel aligned, she didn’t build it.

Laura Roeder’s career reminds us that success doesn’t have to feel heavy—it can feel light, if it’s designed right.