Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $5M First, Raised Money Later

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

CEO Josh Millet had bootstrapped Criteria to almost $5 million in revenue before raising funding.

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

Josh Millet: I was born in Toronto, Canada. I have dual citizenship of US and Canada. I came to the States for school 20 years ago and have been here ever since.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: All your early customers were in Finland?

Juha Lehtonen: Yes, the early customers were local. Once we were up and running, it took us about a year and a half to launch the product. We did it very gradually. Around 2008, we heard that there was a couple of Swedish guys in sales who were setting up their company in Sweden.

Their goal was to find two or three software products that they wanted to represent. We were able to get started with them. We were among those three software that they represented in Sweden. That was the beginning of a little bit of the international market.

564th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Rahul Chandra, Arkam Ventures

Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures, is a veteran of the Indian Venture Capital industry. This discussion spans historical context to current Unicorn mania. Great analysis!

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Bootstrapping a Vertical CRM Product using Services: Cleverping CEO Haysam Ali (Part 1)

Haysam has built a $10M services business and alongside, he has bootstrapped a vertical CRM product for the telecom industry.

Read on to understand the nuances.

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

563rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Gans Subramanian, Hourglass Venture Partners

Gans Subramanian, Managing Partner at Hourglass Venture Partners, and a former 1Mby1M Premium member who has now formed his own venture fund.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What were the deal sizes?

Juha Lehtonen: It was very little – annual fees of €20,000. It was more like an advertisement for us. In addition to developing the platform, we did quite a lot of projects. We needed to self-finance. After the initial investment, we didn’t raise any other capital. That was the only capital we got. We ended up building up a consultation business.

562nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Naganand Doraswamy, Ideaspring Capital

Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital, adds to our thesis on great investment opportunities within the sub $100 million exit space.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 1)

European companies often follow a methodical, deliberate approach to business building as opposed to mindlessly chasing venture capital.

Juha has used the principles of bootstrapping using services to build his venture 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 background?