Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a 2-Sided Marketplace to $10M

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

CEO Sal Akbani had bootstrapped Gateway Classic Cars to over $10 million in revenue when we spoke in 2017. This is a great story of how a two-sided marketplace was masterfully seeded and scaled in a niche market.

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?

Sal Akbani: We have the same ancestry. My parents were from India. I was born in Pakistan. My mother is from Calcutta. My dad is from Bombay.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Follow-on Venture to Over $100M

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

I have long believed that Go BIG or Go HOME is complete BS. I have seen entrepreneur after entrepreneur build a small but profitable, slower growth business as a first outing, followed by a much larger, higher growth business as a follow-on venture. When we spoke in 2017, Ultra Mobile Co-founder Rizwan Kassim had done exactly that. He is also Co-founder of Mint Mobile, and the parent company of both Ultra Mobile and Mint Mobile was acquired by T-Mobile in 2023.

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?

Rizwan Kassim: My mom is from East Africa. My father was born in Karachi. They both came here in the 70’s. I was born in Simi Valley, California, and lived there for about a decade and then moved up to Victorville. I went to UCLA.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Master Bootstrappers with Over $1B in Exits

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

There’s a GIGANTIC myth in the startup ecosystem. Go BIG or Go HOME! Raise GOBS of venture capital. Otherwise, you can’t build anything big. It’s GIGANTIC BS!

Watch this inspiring 2 minute 09 second video and learn how the Turakhia brothers have created over a billion dollars of personal wealth through significant exits without raising any venture capital:

Capital efficient ventures often end up creating a lot more money for entrepreneurs.

Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock, and his brother Divyank have bootstrapped Directi, a portfolio of Internet businesses over the last ~20 years. In 2014, they had their first $160 million exit. In 2016, they had a second $900 million exit. It’s a very interesting story of masterful business acumen and disciplined fundamentals-driven execution. Not a penny of external financing involved when we spoke in 2017, by the way.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Niche E-commerce Brand

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

We’ve talked about niche, proprietary e-commerce brands and how entrepreneurs are building businesses around different concepts. Founder Eric Shannon shared the story of Big Barker, a dog bed for large dogs, with me in 2017.

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?

Eric Shannon: I was born in Pennsylvania in a suburb about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I went to Temple University. I was a Finance major. After school, I moved to California and took a job in banking. I hated it and was terrible at it. I had a couple of other jobs and eventually discovered the internet side of the economy. I became very attached to it. I started in that industry in 2004.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Couple Bootstrapped to $10M from Colorado

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

Love and startups go hand in hand for AdCellerant Co-founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson, who are helping media companies generate seven-figure revenue streams. Here is our conversation from 2017.

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

Brock Berry: Thanks for having us. I’m the Founder and CEO of AdCellerant. I’m from Indiana where I grew up and spent the first 23 years of my life before I was compelled to move to Colorado where the weather is a little friendlier and there were a few more work opportunities.

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Catching Up On Readings: Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25

This report from Gartner ranks the top 25 healthcare supply chain for 2023. Cleveland Clinic takes the top spot followed by Corewell Health, AdventHealth, Stanford Health Care, and Advocate Health. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

627th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

Roundtable Recap: December 14 – Discussions of Some FinTech Ideas

During this week’s roundtable, we discussed two FinTech ideas.

Dinio

First, we had Richard Carrion in Puerto Rico pitch Dinio, a digital bank for Puerto Rico.

Safemultiple

Then Dayanand Menashi from Connecticut pitch Safemultiple, a valuation service for tech startups.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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