Best of Bootstrapping: Organically Bootstrapped to $200M

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

Founder Jorn Lyseggen started Meltwater in Norway and, when we spoke in 2015, had scaled the company organically to $200 million. Fascinating journey!

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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608th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

608th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Max Brickman, Heartland Ventures

Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures, talks about his firm’s investment thesis.

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Serial Entrepreneur Bootstrapping Three PropTech Ventures: LuxuryProperty Founder Jason Hayes (Part 1)

Jason has worked at the cusp of real estate and digital marketing for 35 years and built three successful ventures. All of them are bootstrapped, organically grown, capital efficient businesses.

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?

Catching Up On Readings: ChatGPT Risks and its Responsible Use

This feature from Gartner identifies six ChatGPT associated risks that legal and Compliance leaders must evaluate and build appropriate measures to steer responsible use of ChatGPT. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Roundtable Recap: June 15 – Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later

During this week’s roundtable, we had several companies that have bootstrapped to revenue and are seeking fresh funding to get to the next stage. This is consistent with our Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later philosophy. You can study the subject in this course.

First, though, we had a great conversation with Max Brickman from Heartland Ventures about his firm’s investment thesis.

LIVID

First up, we had Matthias from Germany pitch LIVID, a high touch selling technology that is gaining its first traction in automotive.

Prosal

Next, we had Nick Lopez from the San Francisco Bay Area, pitch Prosal, a Saas company selling RFP management and business development software to SMB consulting firms.

DreamJob

Then we had Shazeeye Kirmani from Menlo Park, California, pitch DreamJob, an idea for upskilling tech professionals.

RogoFire

From Westminster, Colorado, we had Rod Goossen pitch RogoFire, a technology for managing fire fighter teams in action.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Significant Software Company to Exit

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

When we spoke in 2015, Emagine CEO Dave Peters had managed to bootstrap a significant software company from Australia. The focus was on TELCO churn management, and the customer base was primarily Australian, Asian, and African. Read this interview to learn more of the nuances. In September 2017 Emagine was acquired by Comviva.

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 background?

Dave Peters: I’m Australian. I grew up in a little town of 8,000 people, about five hours west of Sydney. It was a farming community and my father was an Anglican minister. That’s a pretty unlikely starting point for an entrepreneur.

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Building a Generative AI Startup to $10M+ with a Virtual Team: Chris Lu, CEO of Copy.ai (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Series A is the last financing round?

Chris Lu: That’s been our last financing.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about your virtual team. You’ve chosen to move to Houston and build a virtual team.