611th Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting in 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 611th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, July 13, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. MEETING NUMBER: 2552 149 0830 PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

Featured Videos

Ukrainian Entrepreneur Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to $7M ARR: Nikita Sherbina, CEO of AIScreen (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Was it just you and your Ukrainian developers at this point?

Nikita Sherbina: No. One was a developer and the other was a designer. I’m the Product Sanager, Sales. One guy was building it. Another guy was designing it. I was trying to build a sales team and thinking about different features. If you have a couple of people, you can do a lot. I don’t think you even need a good developer. You need to solve before you build.

Best of Bootstrapping: Co-founders Bootstrapped First, Raised $22M Later

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Here is yet another story of a high-growth SaaS company that was bootstrapped first. When I spoke with RJMetrics Co-founder Robert Moore in 2016, the company had gone on to raise $22 million. RJMetrics was acquired by Magento and is now part of Adobe Commerce Cloud.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Robert Moore: I was born in Annapolis, Maryland but actually grew up and spent the majority of my childhood in a town called Glassboro, New Jersey, which is in southern New Jersey. My journey really begins in high school where I started my first business and really fell in love with entrepreneurship. Everything grew out of that.

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Video FAQs

Ukrainian Entrepreneur Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to $7M ARR: Nikita Sherbina, CEO of AIScreen (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you get your first customer? It sounds like you had a personal experience as well as observed experience of identifying the problem. How did you get to the first customer?

Nikita Sherbina: We outsource sales people and back in my country, we educate them. We educate those sales reps how to gather emails from LinkedIn. You go to Google Maps. You search 100 different locations with restaurants. You schedule those with your offer. You get a response.

Cloud Stocks: MongoDB Accelerates Atlas Enhancements for Developers

According to a recent report, the Cloud Database and DBaaS Market grew at 11% CAGR from 2019 to 2022. It is expected to grow at 15% CAGR to reach $40 billion by 2029 from $16 billion in 2022. MongoDB (Nasdaq: MDB) recently reported its first-quarter results that surpassed market expectations.

Ukrainian Entrepreneur Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to $7M ARR: Nikita Sherbina, CEO of AIScreen (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra:: Talk about the two projects.

Nikita Sherbina: I was working in an AI-enabled tool company. It was for marketing and sales people. It helped communication between departments. For example, you can create multiple campaigns in sales. Marketing people can see all these statistics. We’ve 80 customers which generated $80 million of revenue. It was a B2B SaaS business. We were providing a software platform.

Ukrainian Entrepreneur Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to $7M ARR: Nikita Sherbina, CEO of AIScreen (Part 1)

This is a classic bootstrapping story with a very small team to serious revenue.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Nikita Sherbina: I was born and raised in Ukraine. I moved to the United States about six years ago without knowing anything about this land.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped an AI Software Company to Exit

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Artificial Intelligence startups are very hot these days. Read how CEO Dave Copps built Brainspace from Dallas. After we spoke in 2016, Brainspace was acquired by Cyxtera Technologies in 2017.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Dave Copps: I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. My dad was an eye surgeon. My parents had moved down from Wisconsin. They were snow birds, as they called themselves. My mom was a community leader. My dad was very smart. He graduated from college at 17. His dad had the same background. He went to the Navy while his friends were graduating.

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