Non-Technical Founder Building a Tech Startup to over $10m: David Moricca, CEO of Socialive (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What is the total amount from friends and family investors to get to $10 million?

David Moricca: Maybe $9 million. $6.5 million was not as Socialive. A lot of companies do pivot. I hear stories about companies who fail for the first time. They just restart. The thing about that is you’re leaving your investors high and dry.

Sramana Mitra: That is correct. If you have professional investors who are accustomed to taking losses and just writing off things, it’s one thing. If it’s personal relationships at stake, you have to honor those. Friends and family investments have pros and cons. What you’re pointing out is that if you leave them high and dry, then you lose the relationship.

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I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Namibia II

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I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Namibia I

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Non-Technical Founder Scaling SaaS Venture to Exit: Velocify Founder Jeff Solomon (Part 6)

Jeff Solomon: I talked to some other mentors and people I’ve met over the years and came to the conclusion that it was better for me to leave the day-to-day operations. I probably undersold my value to our Board and to our investors. The investors didn’t appreciate the scrappy founder guy like they do now.

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Non-Technical Founder Building a Tech Startup to over $10M: David Moricca, CEO of Socialive (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you launch Socialive?

David Moricca: July 2016 was when we first brought the product out. Then we rebranded it to Socialive in October 2016. The last five years, we’ve been Socialive.

Sramana Mitra: How did you price the product?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping to $10M from Finland

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

In our effort to bring you stories from the global startup ecosystem, here we introduce you to Mikko Valimaki, Co-founder of Tuxera, and his wonderful success story from Finland.

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 circumstances?

Mikko Valimaki: I’m a 39-year-old guy from Finland. I did my schooling in Finland. I did, however, study in Berkeley in the United States and was exposed to the American culture. I’ve never worked for any big company. I always started my own stuff. I had already developed my own computer games back in the 1990s while at high school. I tried to sell those.

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