Best of Bootstrapping: How SmartBuyGlasses CEO David Menning Bootstrapped to $50 Million

David has bootstrapped a global e-commerce venture from Hong Kong. Splendid execution! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? David Menning: I grew up in Sydney. I’ve been educated in Australia. In my later years, I studied

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Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What country did you first go into outside Denmark? Sebastian Petersen: Norway and Sweden. Then we started going south into Germany and France. Sramana Mitra: Was there something different that Norway and Sweden wanted? Sebastian Petersen: Only simple things. Once we started moving out of Scandinavia to Germany and France and especially Eastern

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Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What other strategic moves did you make between the $10 million round and the IPO where you grew revenues tremendously? Was there anything you did strategically? Tarek Sherif: Yes, I think there are a couple of things. Let me take you back one step. So, we had two mantras when we were building

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Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can you tell me how many years are we talking in this mode? When did you move out of your mom’s house to your own apartment? Sebastian Petersen: We only did that for about six months. Sramana Mitra: How much were you doing, revenue-wise, when you moved to the apartment? Sebastian Petersen: I

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Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The first customers that you were getting traction with, how much were they paying you? Tarek Sherif: We tried a couple of different charging models. At first, we thought about a per-patient model. Back then, people were charging per data point. We tried a couple of those and they were frustrating for us.

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Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  What a wonderful story of an ecommerce company bootstrapping to $12 million from a small town called Horsens in Denmark. All 60 employees work out of Horsens currently. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you

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Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to when you decided to get together and start this company. What was the idea? What did they want to do? It sounds like they brought the technical and domain knowledge about the CRO industry. What did they have? What was in their mind that they wanted to do? Tarek

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Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 2)

Tarek Sherif: Working for a large corporation was a good experience in the sense that I figured out what I didn’t want to do. I came out of there determined to never be in a role where I didn’t have a large measure of control. As I used to joke about it, I ended up

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