Bootstrapping to $3M a month: Prequel CEO Timur Khabirov (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are some examples of non-paid customer acquisition?

Timur Khabirov: Some celebrity who makes their own content. Let’s talk about viral effect. The first one was BTS. I didn’t know about this band before, but they started using Prequel. When I woke up, we were on the top. The BTS group used Prequel during the Grammys. Twitter was crazy.

Sramana Mitra: That gave you a huge lift.

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Catching Up On Readings: OpenAI’s GPT-4 Rollout

This interview by ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis with Open AI CEO Sam Altman explores the risks and opportunities of GPT-4, the latest iteration of the AI language model. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bootstrapping to $3M a month: Prequel CEO Timur Khabirov (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about influencer marketing. What did you do?

Timur Khabirov: Influencer marketing is a bit complicated. If you’re doing user acquisition, it’s a clear traffic. You understand your consumers. You understand the conversion rate. With influencer marketing, it’s not that easy to manage this.

Sramana Mitra: But it’s worthwhile in your opinion?

Video FAQs

Bootstrapping to $3M a month: Prequel CEO Timur Khabirov (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Explain, step by step, how you brought this product to market?

Timur Khabirov: You need to understand what the market needs. We have social media platforms. What do they need? First and foremost, it has to be a time saver. Then, it has to be easy.

Sramana Mitra: Are we talking about a B2C product?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Web Hosting Company to $60M

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

When we spoke in 2014, Christopher Aker, Founder of Linode, had already had many opportunities to raise money along the way while bootstrapping to a $60 million revenue level. Find out why he chose not to. Linode was acquired by Akamai Technologies in 2022.

Sramana: Chris, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Tell me where you are from and set the stage for your entrepreneurial journey.

Christopher Aker: I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. We lived on the main land off of a coastal barrier island. I had a traditional American, South Jersey coastal upbringing. We had a lot of summer jobs and a huge amount of people would flock to our town in the summer to enjoy the beach.

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602nd 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

Roundtable Recap: March 16 – Two Startups Already in Revenue

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

Albiva

First up, we had Ivana Iesini from London, UK, pitch Albiva – a natural skin care line that is already in revenue.

ChargebackZero

Next, we had Vasanth Matamudra from San Ramon, California, with Sudhir and Raja in India, pitching ChargebackZero, a FinTech venture that is also already in revenue.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Bootstrapping to $3M a month: Prequel CEO Timur Khabirov (Part 1)

Timur has bootstrapped a digital app to $3M a month. Read on to learn how.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?