AppLovin Struggles, But Focuses on NFTs for Growth

The global mobile application market is estimated to grow at 13% CAGR through 2030 from $187.58 billion in 2021. Despite the strong projections, AppLovin (Nasdaq:APP) is not very optimistic about the future. Its recent second quarter results failed to meet market expectations. The macro economic uncertainty caused it to drop its outlook as well. But the company is banking on the emerging trend of NFTs to drive growth.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 1)

Victor bootstrapped Quintiq to $30M, raised funding, and then sold the company for over $300M. ActiVote is his second startup, currently self-funded.

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

Bootstrapping a RegTech Venture to $20M: PerformLine CEO Alex Baydin (Part 5)

Alex Baydin: They had the same compliance constraints that they had in terms of not being deceptive or misleading. There was a lot more probability that something would go wrong in a free-form phone call. We decided to build a speech analytics module and that’s where we started thinking about our product vision. However, our customers are interacting with their prospects, and we wanted to be able to offer this layer of protection so they can move fast.

We set upon a roadmap of launching a new channel every 18 months or so. We added a call center. Now we had a nice cross-sell engine play. If we’re doing a good job, we could get introduced to the call center compliance team and sell them capacity as well. Then we launched email compliance, followed by messaging, and then social more recently.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Fast Growth Company Using Services

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

Gurman Hundal, Co-founder of MiQ, had bootstrapped a fast growth company using services when we spoke in 2016. Read about his impressive journey.

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?

Gurman Hundal: I was born in England in a town about 30 miles from London. My family is from the northern state of Punjab in India. Even though I was born in England, I couldn’t speak English till I was about six years old. I have a British-Indian upbringing. My parents owned their own shoe shop in a shopping mall near where we live. I got an early exposure to family-run organizations. I went through the educational system within England. I went to University of Kingston where I studied Business. It was there where I started my career.

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October 27 – 594th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 594th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, October 27, 2022, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST.

If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.

You can learn more here and REGISTER TO PITCH OR ATTEND HERE. Register and you will receive the recording by email, even if you are unable to attend. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!

Bootstrapping a RegTech Venture to $20M: PerformLine CEO Alex Baydin (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Expand on that limited exclusivity. When you do deals like this, you’re almost developing the software for their use. How do you get out of the limited exclusivity and go from a services business to a product business where you can sell that to other people?

Alex Baydin: I got lucky. This customer was rooting as much for me as he was for having a viable solution for his business. It might have only been 9 or 12 months of exclusivity but we were soon free to bring other customers onto the platform.

Sramana Mitra: It took you that long to build the software anyway.

Catching Up On Readings: Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022

This feature from TechCrunch covers the highlights of the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022 where among the 20 finalists that pitched on stage, five finalists were selected, and one winner was announced for the $100,000 prize and the Startup Battlefield cup. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bootstrapping a RegTech Venture to $20M: PerformLine CEO Alex Baydin (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: During the period that you’re describing, vertical ad networks were starting to be fairly big. I remember we were covering companies like Adify and vertical search engines like Kayak. In this period that you were describing, a vertical ad network was starting to develop.

Alex Baydin: A couple of signals started happening. Because we were delivering this report which entailed screenshots of all the user experience that generated the lead, we started hearing from our customers that the quality of what we were selling was good and the volume is low. They said, “But that report is super interesting. How do I get that report when I buy from the vertical ad network or I buy from the large ad networks?” They were very interested in that.