Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Unicorns

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

While it doesn’t happen that often, Bootstrapped Unicorns do exist.

My 2014 Entrepreneur Journeys book, Billion Dollar Unicorns, has a whole section on this topic. You can read an excerpt on my blog titled Bootstrapped Unicorns. In this piece, I discuss three companies, Zoho, eClinicalWorks, and Veeam, that have bootstrapped to about a billion dollars in revenues.

Revenues NOT valuation.

That puts their valuations in the five to ten billion range or beyond. So they are Unicorns (billion dollar valuation) many times over.

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Featured Videos

568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about the acquisition itself. At what point did you start speaking with the acquirer? I introduced you to a whole bunch of people as well. We were working on getting you in front of people. Discuss when did you start this process and how you put one foot after the other.

Abinash Saikia: At our peak, we were close to a million dollars in revenue. Towards the end of the year, the pandemic hit and we were not able to close the deals, but we were in that range. When the pandemic hit, it was a very uncertain time. We knew that we had some backup in terms of funding but not a whole lot. We know that we’re going through a phase where sales would drop significantly.

AI Unicorns 2022: CommerceIQ Leverages AI for Retail Industry Digitization

Analysts estimate e-commerce sales in the US to cross $1 trillion in 2022. Earlier pre-pandemic estimates had predicted the industry to cross this milestone in 2024. B2B e-commerce is also expected to grow 12% this year to $1.77 trillion. Companies like CommerceIQ are making it easier for the retail industry to transform their digital operations to keep pace with this high growth.

Video FAQs

Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How far did you take that company?

Jonathan Spier: We grew it for about seven and a half years. We had raised a little over $20 million, and we had an offer to sell into the nine figures from a major enterprise software company. One of the board members didn’t want to sell. They kept it private. The good news is it’s a good company. It’s still considered the leader in the enterprise analytics category.

Sramana Mitra: What is the name of the company?

Thursday, April 28 – 573rd 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 573rd FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, April 28, 2022, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST.

If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.

You can learn more here and REGISTER TO PITCH OR ATTEND HERE. Register and you will receive the recording by email, even if you are unable to attend. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!

Best of Bootstrapping: Blitzscaling versus Bootstrapping

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

You must have read something or the other about Blitzscaling, the hypergrowth phenomenon that Reid Hoffman has been championing:

What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?

The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion – as quickly as possible.

Well, I have a small fact to point out: it probably isn’t an option for you.

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568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Total funding of under one million dollars and a little bit of government fund. Talk about the customer development process. Where did you get the customers from? What type of customers zeroed in on your value proposition?

Abinash Saikia: Before these guys put in money, we were able to acquire a reputable customer. You’ve probably heard of Biocon in India which is the largest biopharmaceutical company in India. I was working in strategy at Biocon. My manager connected me to the CIO at Biocon. I built a relationship with him over time. They became our first customers.

Cloud Stocks: Analysis of Snowflake’s Streamlit Acquisition

According to a recent report, the global Data Warehouse as a Service Market is estimated to grow at 25% CAGR to reach $7.69 billion by 2028. The growth is driven by increasing investments in machine learning and artificial intelligence along with BYOD services. San Mateo-based Snowflake is a leading data warehouse solution provider that is addressing this growing market through inorganic growth.