Smart City Use Cases and Opportunities: Jay Chandan, CEO of Gorilla Technology (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In those situations, they are the tier one system integrator and you come in as a tier two or tier three.

Jay Chandan: I’m happy being tier two. I wouldn’t call myself tier three today.

Sramana Mitra: Your genesis is Taiwan. Where are you getting the traction? Is it more in Southeast Asia?

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping with Services First

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

Bay Dynamics Co-founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte wanted to work together on a new venture. They first built a services company, then introduced an OEM product, and eventually bootstrapped a product under their own brand. When we spoke in 2016, the company had just raised its first venture money after many years of being in business as a profitable, growing entity. Broadcom acquired Bay Dynamics in 2019.

Sramana Mitra: One of you should probably get started. I want to go back to the very beginning of your journey, and learn about your pre-Bay Dynamics story. Where were you born, raised and, in what kind of background?

Feris Rifai: I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. That’s where I was raised till I was 18 years old. I then came to the United States to go to college. I went to school at Indiana University. It was a great experience for me. Throughout my journey when I was much younger in Lebanon, it was a bit of a difficult upbringing because we couldn’t find a way to get safety to be a part of our lives. I think it’s taught me a lot. It has helped me be, believe it or not, very optimistic.

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Smart City Use Cases and Opportunities: Jay Chandan, CEO of Gorilla Technology (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The point that I’m probing here is, you have a cybersecurity business. Then you have a transportation management business. Is that the best way to manage a business to have such diversity? In each of those, you’re going to encounter pure play providers. Cybersecurity is an extraordinarily competitive market. You’re going to be facing all the competition from the cybersecurity world.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped with a Rigorous Data-Driven Approach

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Wrike Founder Andrew Filev has built a company with a rigorous data-driven approach. Learn how they bootstrapped first, raised money later from our conversation in 2015.

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?

Andrew Filev: I was born in St. Petersburg in Russia. I got interested in computers pretty early. I spent a lot of my childhood playing with computers, building and programming, and designing. I also had a big interest in other sciences as well. I competed in different math, physics, and chemistry competitions.

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Smart City Use Cases and Opportunities: Jay Chandan, CEO of Gorilla Technology (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How do you do that? How do you intervene in reducing infractions?

Jay Chandan: That is by better traffic management at the intersections. We have a traffic management solution which we have built and deployed at a fraction of the cost.

Best of Bootstrapping: Scaled with Angel Money in Canada

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When we spoke in 2015, Joel Lessem was scaling a profitable company in Toronto called Firmex, and had only spent $4 million in angel money to get to almost $10 million in revenue. Datasite acquired Firmex in 2021.

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?

Joel Lessem: I was born in Israel but raised in Toronto from the age of three. I grew up in Toronto.

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Smart City Use Cases and Opportunities: Jay Chandan, CEO of Gorilla Technology (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Is it a product company or a services company?

Jay Chandan: It’s a mix. Today, about 60% of our revenue comes from product and about 40% from services.

Sramana Mitra: What’s in the product?