Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Highly Profitable Company in Social Media Marketing

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

When we spoke in 2015, Founder Jamie Tedford had bootstrapped Brand Networks to a highly profitable, large business, leveraging the disruption in brand marketing caused by social media. Excellent execution!

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?

Jamie Tedford: I was born in a town north of Boston, Massachusetts. It’s a very typical middle-class story and family. I’m third-generation Jamie Tedford. My grandfather started a family business. He was actually an MIT alumnus. He came out of MIT during the Great Depression. He went to work for a paper company and decided to start a lumber mill. He is the first of the family that I can track back who’s an entrepreneur. The business eventually turned into a commercial lumber yard. The family stayed pretty close to home. My dad went to work for him.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sergey Jakimov, Co-Founder and Partner at LongeVC (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I want to double-click down on a bunch of areas that are broadly relevant to digital health. What you said about applying AI to drug discovery is of interest. Any kind of quantified health measures is also of interest.

The intersection of computer science and biology is where our audience would find the most useful insight. What is the state of the union and where are you playing? What are some of the case studies in your portfolio?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sergey Jakimov, Co-Founder and Partner at LongeVC (Part 1)

Sergey Jakimov is Co-founder and Partner at LongeVC, a firm focused on the Longevity space. We discuss trends and opportunities in this sector full of whitespaces waiting for the entrepreneur’s magic touch.

Sramana Mitra: Give us a little bit of an introduction about your background as well as about LongeVC.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using a Paycheck to Techstars and Acquisition

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

In previous stories, we showed you how entrepreneurs bootstrapped with a paycheck and then got into Y Combinator with a validated business. With Blueprint Registry, we show you the same strategy in this conversation from 2017 as executed by Co-founder Nevin Shetty to get into Techstars. Blueprint Registry was acquired by David’s Bridal Inc. in 2018.

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?

Nevin Shetty: I was born in Alabama but the first memory I have is of Saudi Arabia. I spent five years in Saudi Arabia. My dad is an aeronautical engineer. I grew up in an American compound in Riyadh and had an amazing childhood. Growing up, I remember my mom teaching English to some of the Saudi princes. I’d go over there and play with them. Then my dad moved and got a job at Boeing, so I moved to Seattle. Then I went to college at University of Washington at Seattle.

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Catching Up On Readings: CES 2023

This video feature from The Verge covers the best of CES 2023 including the biggest announcements, names, and gadgets shown this year in Las Vegas. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bootstrapping Using Services to $35M from Ireland, Then Raising $70M: Teamwork CEO Peter Coppinger (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How do you compare with companies like Replicon?

Peter Coppinger: I don’t know Replicon. I have to check them out.

Sramana Mitra: I haven’t talked to them in a long time, but their pitch is similar to yours. I haven’t tracked them.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $180M in Online Real Estate

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

When we spoke in 2015, Co-founder Jeff Frieden had bootstrapped Auction.com to about $180 million in revenue and profitability. Thereafter, he raised private equity financing and growth capital and ran a private company that was more than qualified to be a public Unicorn. The company had a legitimate revenue and profitability model that was scaling phenomenally well. Unlike many ‘funny money Unicorns’, this one was for real!

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

Jeff Frieden: I was born in Orange County, California and raised in Anaheim, California. It was right across the street from Disneyland. My mom and dad both worked at the Internal Revenue Service at Los Angeles after World War II.

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Bootstrapping Using Services to $35M from Ireland, Then Raising $70M: Teamwork CEO Peter Coppinger (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What marketing channels were producing for you?

Peter Coppinger: The referral was a nice slow burner that cost us nothing. We did affiliates. We did Google ads. It works,but there’s a point of saturation. It probably worked better years ago.

Sramana Mitra: It’s expensive now.

Peter Coppinger: The only one making money is Google. Deep integrations also worked.