10 Founder CEOs Discuss Building Tech Startups Worth Millions in Podcasts

Entrepreneurs working to get their ventures across the million-dollar revenue mark and beyond can learn how other successful founders were able to get there in this series of 30-minute podcast interviews.

Bhavin Parikh, Founder CEO of Magoosh – Has built an incredibly capital efficient venture, and we discuss his philosophy, strategy, and tactics.

Al Lalani, Founder of Social Annex – Discusses why he has followed his capital-efficient entrepreneurship strategy, and how he has managed to win against competitors who have each raised tens of millions in funding. Al has raised a total of $3 million.

Blaine Vess, Co-founder of StudyMode – Discusses how he made multiple business model shifts, and eventually scaled his company to $20 million in revenue with a sub 1% freemium conversion rate.

Ernie Bray, Founder CEO at Auto Claims Direct (ACD) – Has built a 50-person team with 80% of the organization working virtually from different parts of the US. The company does over $15 million in revenue.

Chris Gladwin, CEO of Cleversafe – Has built a highly valuable company using a unique and impressive IP strategy in the enterprise storage space. We discuss fat startups, valuation of patent portfolios, and more.

Amit Gupta, Co-founder of InMobi – Knowing my aversion to ‘Valuation Without Revenue’ Unicorns, Amit starts off by telling us that InMobi’s valuation is firmly anchored in revenues. He goes on to discuss InMobi’s strategy for going global, and highlights the unorthodox nature of the journey.

Kean Graham, CEO of MonetizeMore – Started his company with the stated goal of being able to travel while building his business. Listen to how he realized this goal.

Arjun Dev Arora, Founder of ReTargeter – As also a Venture Partner at 500 Startups, he has a great deal of domain expertise in AdTech, and we spent most of the discussion on that topic.

Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam – This is Ratmir’s second venture, so he had some money to bootstrap with. Consequently, Veeam avoided taking any venture capital and grew organically till about $200 million in revenue. Today, Ratmir has taken some money, but only to give himself and his co-founder some liquidity, and to access a network to find adjacent product lines. Ratmir also discusses how he has structured the investment such that the company doesn’t need to exit.

Jason Cohen, Founder of WP Engine – Has bootstrapped four companies, and with the most recent one, he bootstrapped first, and then raised substantial money. Jason shares what he has learned across all his ventures.

Photo credit: Paxson Woelber/Flickr.com.