Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of conversion rates did you experience? Are you willing to discuss that? Christian Vanek: Sure, we’re an open book. From our website, we have about 1% conversion rate of visitors to trial or free customers. From free customers to paid customers, we have about 0.7% conversion rate. For our trial customers that come

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Catching Up On Readings: Startup Transatlantic M&As

The Startup Transatlantic M&As. US vs EU report is going to be presented at the European Innovation Day conference on September 12th in Mountain View, Calif. The report which looked at over 6,000 startup deals over the past five years says that US acquirers completed 82% of the deals. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How much were you selling for? What was your business model and pricing model? How were you monetizing your product? Guy Mucklow: I might have mentioned earlier that we had two main licensing models in the early days because we saw mass market potential for this kind of service. We looked to go

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Adrian Ridner, CEO of Study.com (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You are expecting that somewhere in the near future, you’re going to be able to access some Federal funding to educate low-income students. You’re going to be part of the government’s resources to deal with the education of a large number of students? Adrian Ridner: Absolutely. The pilot program is initially in the

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Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I have a few questions on this. First, talk to me about your freemium strategy. What did you offer for free and what did you offer for premium? Christian Vanek: What we offer for free now is probably too much. That comes back down to the cultural problems in my organization. I tend

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Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You’re saying that your main competitive strategy in winning accounts that would use your software for their sales enhancement process was to find them through different channels where you were not facing competitors? Guy Mucklow: Largely. I guess, it was also about the way in which we sold. We had a major focus on delivering

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Adrian Ridner, CEO of Study.com (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you now revenue-wise? How far along are you? Adrian Ridner: As a privately-held company, we don’t share specific financials, but we’re definitely in the tens of million range. Sramana Mitra: What trends do you see out there right now that you think are interesting trends that are worth discussing in this conversation?

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Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You said you that you rank in the first three search results for survey software. As you said, there is lots of competitors. Why do people buy your software over your competitors? What is the key positioning point that you win on? Christian Vanek: We serve two markets. The first market is definitely

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