Roundtable Recap: October 19 – Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later

During this week’s roundtable, we worked with two entrepreneurs.

RAVC Solutions

First up we had Ratan Agrahari in Lucknow, India, pitch RAVC Solutions, a solar services venture with serious ambition.

Aladdin Digital

Next we had Darlington Onyeagoro from Lagos, Nigeria, pitch Aladdin Digital, a cross border payment company for the African market.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Featured Videos

Building an AI Unicorn: Glean CEO Arvind Jain (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In your selection of which investors to work with, what was your decision making? Was it people you worked with before?

Arvind Jain: There are two key investors in our first round. One of them was Ravi from Lightspeed. I had worked with him in my previous startup. It was an easy choice from that perspective. We also raised from Kleiner Perkins. They had the right experience for us.

Building an AI Unicorn: Glean CEO Arvind Jain (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This problem has been identified a long time ago. People have tried to build such enterprise knowledge management companies before. I’ve seen many of these attempts. Mostly they’ve failed. While these attempts were made and failing, there was an explosion of digital tools and data. All this was happening in parallel.

In 2019, the enterprise world is more data-rich. There’s more to draw from. AI has become mainstream by this time. What is it in your approach that is different in 2019?

Video FAQs

Best of Bootstrapping: The Buy Side Perspective of Bootstrap to Exit Startups

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

I hope you are following the Bootstrapping to Exit (let’s call it B2E) articles. Last time, I showed you some case studies of larger companies who are acquiring bootstrapped startups.

In this post, I will double-click down on the buy-side psychology of the B2E phenomenon.

There are several factors that play into a relatively larger company acquiring a smaller player.

Financials.

Companies acquire for different reasons. Some acquire to bring in substantial chunks of high growth revenue. Some acquire to bring in adjacent products that their sales force and channel can upsell to existing customers. Some acquire to diversify out of a one-trick pony situation. Sellers need to consider the buyer’s psychology and accordingly steer the conversation.

Valuations vary significantly depending of motivations. Revenue-driven acquisitions tend to be easier to put a price on. Valuations tend to be a multiple of the revenue, regardless of how much money the company has raised.

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622nd 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 622nd FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, October 19, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!   

Building an AI Unicorn: Glean CEO Arvind Jain (Part 1)

Arvind is an experienced entrepreneur who was able to raise $15M on a concept to solve a big problem. Since then, Glean has been abundantly funded, generates abundant revenue and has become a legitimate Unicorn.

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?

Best of Bootstrapping: Noteworthy Bootstrapping to Exit Case Studies

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

I hope you read my article Bootstrapping to Exit. As a follow-up, here are some more case studies from 2019.

From Freshworks Has Acquired Nine Capital Efficient Startups:

All the nine acquisitions by Freshworks have been for undisclosed amounts. Cloud-based video collaboration platform 1CLICK, acquired in 2015, was founded in 2012 and had raised an undisclosed seed round from Blume Ventures and The Chennai Angels in 2014.

Online social discovery platform Frilp, acquired in 2015, was founded in 2012 and had raised $500K in funding from angel investors, including Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham in August 2014 and an undisclosed venture round with Microsoft Accelerator. It had over 100K users.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later Strategy

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

I wrote a book called Billion Dollar Unicorns a few years back. Writing this book took me through the extensive process of talking to entrepreneurs who have built tech companies with valuations above a billion dollars. While there is a tremendous amount of serendipity involved in any extraordinary success story, one recurring theme comes up in these case studies. I am particularly excited to share this nugget because it applies broadly to all classes of entrepreneurial ventures.

Bootstrap first, raise money later.

That’s what Fred Luddy did when he founded ServiceNow back in 2005. Leveraging his domain knowledge and expertise in IT ServiceDesk software, he rapidly acquired 12 customers before raising funding. Initially, he started charging $25 per seat and the 12 customers paid up. He raised $2.5 million in venture capital WITH 12 customers, and ample validation.

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