Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to $26M and a Fabulous Exit

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

When we spoke in 2021, Founder CEO Vamsi Kora had bootstrapped Gathi Analytics to over $26 million in revenue in four years and exited at a fabulous multiple. Much to learn from his 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?

Vamsi Kora: I’m from south India, from a village in Rajamundry, which is very close to the Bay of Bengal. I did Mechanical Engineering. Right after it, I went to have one of the very few well-paid careers at that time. I couldn’t afford to come to the US. So I went into merchant shipping and roamed around the world for about three years. I made two and half rounds around the equator.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to Exit and THEN Did a VC-Funded Venture

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

A very effective way to dance the entrepreneurial Waltz is to do a bootstrapped company first, sell it, and then do another venture with a more ambitious agenda. From 2021, Jeremy Swift’s journey as Co-founder and CEO of Cordial is a great case study in this method.

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

Jeremy Swift: I was born in Beaverton, Oregon. Most people know about Beaverton because of Nike. It’s a small suburb outside of Portland. I grew up in what I would consider a small middle class family. Both my parents were a rare breed and especially different from the path that I’ve taken in my life. The first job they got out of college is the same job that they retired with 40 plus years later.

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Catching Up On Readings: Impact of Streaming on Music

This feature from The Wall Street Journal analyzes the impact of streaming on the music industry. In 2022, on-demand music streams in the U.S. alone exceeded 1 trillion. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Video FAQs

Building a Global AI Venture for Medical Imaging Analysis from India: Prashant Warier, CEO of Qure.ai (Part 7 )

Sramana Mitra: The lifetime value of the customer is much higher.

Prashant Warier: I don’t think we have had more than one or two churn. That means a lot to me. The lifetime value is high. Also, it takes time to activate a market. Once there is a reasonable number of users in a certain market, that is when you start seeing the cost of sales become low. Initially, you might have to spend a lot. If you look at the cost of sales, you might not be making money on that particular customer. Then you are hoping that you’ll make money on the 31st customer.

Building a Global AI Venture for Medical Imaging Analysis from India: Prashant Warier, CEO of Qure.ai (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When did you enter the US? Before of after the Sequoia funding?

Prashant Warier: Just before the Sequoia funding, we hired our Chief Commercial Officer, but we didn’t have FDA clearance. FDA clearance came in 2021. Our real traction was in 2022. Even now, we are very small in the US. We have some commercial traction, but we’ve a long way to go. The other thing is that we are able to identify patients early.

618th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

Roundtable Recap: September 14 – Proven Business Models Spreading Far and Wide

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

No Sweat Clothes

First up, we had Martin Aker from Oslo, Norway, pitching No Sweat Clothes, a niche e-commerce business already in revenue.

MIAH

Then Emmanuel Akandwanaho from Kamala, Uganda, pitched MIAH, a SaaS-enabled marketplace venture.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Building a Global AI Venture for Medical Imaging Analysis from India: Prashant Warier, CEO of Qure.ai (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: When you validated the TB use case in 2018, did you put that as your only use case? Were you doing other radiology use cases as well?

Prashant Warier: We had a lot of other use cases. We are also working on a head CT product. Chest X-rays has a high volume. The other one requires speed. AI can manage volume and speed. Head CTs are taken when you’re looking at critical cases. When you want to do something quickly, you do a CT. You need a fast interpretation there. For a stroke patient, for every minute that goes by, brain cells are dying. You want to intervene quickly.