Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Meltwater to $200M

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

Jorn Lyseggen, Founder and Executive Chairman of Meltwater, started the company in Norway and scaled organically to $200 million. His fascinating journey was shared with me in 2015.

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

Jorn Lyseggen: I was actually born in Korea. I came to Norway as a very small child. I was three years old. I actually grew up in a little farm in the middle of a deep, dark forest in Norway. You drive for hours into the deep, dark forest and then suddenly, there’s a small opening. Then, you come to a little village with 168 families. One of those families is mine.

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Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Squirro CEO Dorian Selz (Part 1)

Dorian tells a great story of AI applications within Financial Services.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as Squirro.

Dorian Selz: I’m the Founder of Squirro. Squirro is Zurich-based but global AI company. We have over 40 years of recognizing structured and unstructured data.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped AutoClaims Direct to $15M

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

Ernie Bray, Chairman and CEO of AutoClaims Direct (ACD), leveraged his domain knowledge in auto insurance claims processing, and built a robust, sustainable business. When we spoke in 2015, he was using a virtual workforce strategy to scale.

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

Ernie Bray: I was born in a small town in Central California called Porterville, California. It’s a farming community. My dad was a teacher. My mom stayed at home and took care of us. I grew up in a small town environment.

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Cloud Stocks: DocuSign Focuses on Diversifying Portfolio

Recently eSignature player DocuSign (Nasdaq: DOCU) announced its third quarter results that surpassed market expectations. The company is looking to expand its use cases and diversify its product category to drive growth in the coming quarters.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I have a rather different point of view about the definition of good. One Million by One Million has a philosophy that is completely counter to this VC-obsessed philosophy of Silicon Valley. The world has today imported the Valley’s VC obsession. I don’t like it at all.

As far as I’m concerned, a bootstrapped founder who raises a small amount of capital and continues to build a revenue business is a good founder. They may not be fundable at the scale at which large Silicon Valley funds. I’m a huge fan of solid, sustainable businesses.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped from Oklahoma to Exit

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

How often do you hear of a successful entrepreneurship story out of Oklahoma? Well, meet Robin Roberson, Co-founder of WeGoLook. This is our conversation from 2015. WeGoLook was acquired by Crawford & Company in 2017.

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

Robin Roberson: I was born in Oklahoma. I was raised, primarily, on a farm. There were about 12 kids in my class. I didn’t know much about the outside world other than what was there in town. I started my entrepreneurial journey in the second grade making yarn belts on the playground. I was able to talk a few of my friends into making them with me. We had quite the distributorship going with yarn belts until the Principal shut us down. When he asked us to stop making yarn belts, I started making Christmas tree ornaments to sell. He shut that down too.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There is a Series A gap. There are investors that are doing pre-Series A, but it’s a smaller pool. The Series A investors want to see a lot in place before they’re willing to write a check. How do you see this? This is not specific to your firm. I’m asking you generally as an industry observer. How do you see this resolving?

Some of the trends we are seeing is that some of the pre-seed and seed companies are exiting into companies that have raised a lot of money without trying to raise as much money themselves. They have to find some path either through exit, funding, or becoming profitable.

Catching Up On Readings: The Best Reading of 2022

This feature from The Wall Street Journal looks at some of the ten best books across the genres of fiction, non fiction, science fiction, politics, children’s books, and mystery. It also lists the books read or recommended by literary voices, thinkers, leaders, and tastemakers. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.