If you are a regular WordPress user, then WooThemes need no introduction. The start-up was successfully co-founded by a young entrepreneur, Adriaan Pienaar – who is popularly known as Adii Rockstar. Besides being a passionate entrepreneur, Adii – who hails from South Africa, is a web designer and a developer. His entrepreneurial skills have helped him accomplish success that a lot of people today on the web aspire.

At a very young age of just 25, Adii, along with his partners, grew WooThemes to $2 million in revenues in just a couple of years. He has turned his focus to writing lately, and his first book Rockstar Business is soon to be launched. In this interview with Foundora, Adii talks a bit about the importance of web design, his entrepreneurial journey, what aspiring entrepreneurs should do, and of course, WooThemes.

How did you get started with designing and how did Radiiate happen? Also, tell us about the journey from Radiiate to WooThemes?

Back in 2006 I was really fascinated by all of the blogs that started to pop up and wanted to create a blog of my own, so I taught myself WordPress. This evolved from working on a few WP-powered personal projects and eventually to doing a bit of custom, client work in 2007 as a freelancer. So Radiiate was born out of those freelance activities.

At the same time that I started Radiiate, I also started to explore ways in which I could generate a passive income and selling WP themes was the chosen strategy; so WooThemes grew out of that.

Tell us something more about your co-founders; how did you three meet and get along so well in spite of being from 3 different parts of the world? What challenges did you face and what did you do to overcome those challenges?

All of that info here: Bootstrapped Profitable Proud WooThemes.

Your co-founders Magnus & Mark played a significant role in launching, growing WooThemes and make it what it is today, what are the biggest strengths of your team? Any suggestion for upcoming entrepreneurs, co-founders on having a balanced team?

WooThemes would not have been as great as it is today without having such an amazing team; and this isn’t just the fact that we are three co-founders, but that quality is also evident in the whole WooTeam. As a team, we’ve been able to compliment each other’s weaknesses & amplify our strengths.

I guess the trick is the get a diverse set of skills on board, but get like-minded team members so that they can take care of a variety of tasks (as need be), whilst sharing the same work / business philosophy.

At a time, when so many WordPress theme (Free and Premium) creators/sellers were present in the market, how could you outperform them in terms of reaching out to more WP users? What do you think was your business tactic that clicked?

I think marketing & branding has always been one of our top priorities, so we’ve always tried to create an unique voice and interact with as many existing & prospective WooUsers via our different online channels. It also goes without saying that this would’ve been impossible had we not been releasing awesome products that gives us the opportunity of broadcasting our awesomeness.

WooThemes is bootstrapped; and in your blog post “Start-up Financials,” you said, a company optimization is about spending as little as possible and earning as much revenue as possible. What do you think are the key areas where start-ups can save money & where they MUST spend more?

Spend more money on the team itself and then forget about spending money on advertising & online services you don’t need.

Today, WooThemes can be considered to be pretty successful business, but every business contains it’s own jar of mistakes. What are the mistakes do you think that WooThemes made and how different it would have been if you hadn’t made those mistakes?

To  be honest, I don’t think that we’ve made any significant mistakes and whilst we’ve obviously learned a few hard(ish) lessons along the way, I don’t think we’d change anything if we had to go back and do it all over again, as the mistakes were insignificant in terms of what we have been doing.

Baking marketing message in the product itself is the latest marketing method, and WooThemes seems to be doing it perfectly; can you tell us in detail about how WooThemes does it?

Well, we try to steer clear of any kind of “actual” or direct marketing in the traditional sense of the word. We prefer to create awesome products that fits in perfectly with our brand and our believes (in terms of how websites / online businesses should be run) and then we just interact with the users as much as possible. So our marketing efforts are basically a side-project from doing the stuff that is required at the core of WooThemes (creating products & interacting with our users).

You’ve established yourself as a brand “Adii Rockstar” alongside brand WooThemes; does your personal brand benefit your business?

I’d like to think so yes regardless of how significant that influence is. I do however believe that it’s important for one of the members of the team (at least; would be ideal if everyone did this) is really visible, as users like to get to know the people behind the company & products.

What’s with your upcoming book, Rockstar Business? Can you share some insights about it?

I wanted to write a book about the last 3 years of my life in which I’ve branded myself as a “Rockstar” and co-created a very successful business. The book is aimed at being inspirational and not as a how-to in any way, but drawing on all of the lessons & experiences that I’ve accumulated in those last 3 years.

While some web start-ups give design due importance, a few others ignore design completely and concentrate more on innovative backend technology over the design; why do you think design is very important for startups?

Design is what separates the good from the great, as simple as that. There is more than enough great ideas out there and because that market is so saturated, great design will make you stand out from the crowd.

What would be your advice to upcoming and aspiring entrepreneurs?

Start somewhere and start as soon as possible.