Non-Technical Founder Scaling SaaS Venture to Exit: Velocify Founder Jeff Solomon (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is the next major milestone in the history of the company?

Jeff Solomon: Two things. We started to get heavy in insurance. At that time, the secondary education market was growing fast. It’s a very similar model to mortgage in the sense that the money was coming from the government. There was a backlash in that category as well, but we were more careful.

We diversified into those categories which protected us. We found that the categories were anticyclical. When mortgage was up, insurance was down. When insurance was up, mortgage was down. We were able to ride waves and handle the downturnts pretty well.

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Sramana Mitra: Six years is a long time. How much money did you raise to get through six years with little revenue?

David Moricca: Over the years, probably $5 million or less. This was over six to eight years. It sounds crazy.

Sramana Mitra: I’m not surprised that you were able to survive on $6 million for six years. I’m surprised that you were able to raise $6 million given the fact that investors look for scalability. The whole point of venture capital financing is to go from zero to a $100 million in five years. Investors are notorious for pulling the plug the minute they see things not going in the right direction.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping IdeaScale to $5M from Scratch

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

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

Robert Hoehn: I am from Northern New York, almost bordering Canada. I actually did Computer Science in high school. I was a pretty lucky kid to have experience in programming at a pretty young age. I went to the University of Vermont and joined their Computer Engineering program. I studied Computer Science and Business.

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Non-Technical Founder Scaling SaaS Venture to Exit: Velocify Founder Jeff Solomon (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Go back to the 2004 timeframe when you were just getting started. How did you finance the product development and the early stage of the journey. It doesn’t seem like revenues were of a scale where you can fund it with revenues.

Jeff Solomon: Initially, we funded it with cash flow from the consulting business.

Sramana Mitra: Bootstrapping using services is what we call that.

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