Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Virtual Company with a Paycheck

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

Cedric’s story is a textbook case study of the kind of entrepreneur we want to see emerge and grow in every corner of the world: a solo entrepreneur who is a developer and a product guy capable of getting to validation while holding onto a day job. When we spoke in 2019, FormAssembly Founder and CEO Cedric Savarese had almost 50 employees spread around the world, and while it maintained a small office of fewer than 10 people in Indiana, the bulk of the company had scaled as a virtual workforce. Excellent model, and I encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to read this carefully.

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?

Cedric Savarese: I was born in France and expatriated to the US. I grew up in a small town not so far from Paris.

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Featured Videos

Cloud Stocks: Freshworks’ Bots Make Customer Interactions Easier

Chennai, India and San Mateo-based Freshworks (Nasdaq: FRSH) continues to grow rapidly as it expands its CRM offerings. The company is focusing on product innovation and recently added several new bot capabilities to drive growth.

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers from South Africa (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Is telecom the largest category in which you’re doing chat commerce?

Pieter de Villiers: Telecom is the largest category where we see high-volume adoption of chat commerce. However, we believe that financial services will eclipse that very soon.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of financial services?

Video FAQs

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Elisity CEO James Winebrenner (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Your primary insight is that you had the technical background, but you spent time building up sales and business model experience before you took the leap into entrepreneurship.

James Winebrenner: Yes.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping RainmakerForce Decisively to $5M+

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

RainmakerForce CRO Mack Sundaram has built a successful business optimized for autonomy and profitability. Excellent navigation!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Tell us where you’re from. Where did you grow up? Where were you born and raised?

Mack Sundaram: I was born in South India in a village near Chennai. I spent some time of my childhood in Chennai and Pondicherry. I later went to school in New Delhi. Since then, I moved over to the United States where I had an opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree in Economics. That’s where the transition happened.

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May 19 – 575th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 575th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, May 19, 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!

HubSpot Continues to Eat Into its Competition

Inbound marketing specialist HubSpot (NYSE:HUBS) recently reported its first-quarter results that continued to surpass market expectations. HubSpot has been gaining its market share by expanding its product offerings.

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers from South Africa (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: To do this on WhatsApp, what do you have from a technical layer point of view? Is WhatsApp giving you an API into which you are programming your facilities?

Pieter de Villiers: First of all, Clickatell was one of WhatsApp’s first business partners to enable brands to serve clients in this manner. You have to be a WhatsApp-authorized business partner to do these things. Number two is we provide a web interface in a cloud-managed environment where you would typically open a Clickatell account, select the channels you want to use, and start thinking through the customer problems you want to solve.