
Vamsi has bootstrapped Gathi to over $26M in revenue in four years and exited at a fabulous multiple. Much to learn from his journey.
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?
>>>This feature by Micah Rosenbloom and Joseph Flaherty on Founder Collective reiterates the 1Mby1M philosophy of not overdosing on venture capital. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.
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Most businesses can be launched in a capital efficient manner. Most businesses can go a long way in a bootstrapped mode. As long as you’re not taking on capital guzzlers like drug discovery or semiconductor chips, you have many options to explore.
At 1Mby1M, we don’t insist on fund raising. A bootstrapped, capital-efficient, million dollar business is considered a success in our worldview, as long as you are profitable and sustainable.
>>>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.
>>>Seksom Suriyapa, Partner at Upfront Ventures, and formerly head of Corp Dev at Twitter, SuccessFactors, McAfee and Akamai, discusses exit strategy from the buy-side perspective at length.
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Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures, discusses his fund’s pre-seed and seed funding strategy for Indian startups.
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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.
Sramana Mitra: The general philosophy and appreciation of first-time founders has gone up tremendously. At the time that you’re describing, I don’t think we were quite there yet.
>>>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?
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