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

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

The Innovation Management software space is quite crowded. When I spoke to Co-founder Robert Hoehn in 2016, IdeaScale had managed to carve out a niche. Read on!

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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556th Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 556th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, December 9, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

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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556th Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting In 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 556th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, December 9, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

Non-Technical Founder Building a Tech Startup to over $10M: David Moricca, CEO of Socialive (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When Ben comes on board, what are you able to accomplish? Did the business validate?

David Moricca: We did get Breakout Band built over the next couple of years. We ended up working with a couple of European engineers as well who were experts at audio technology. We also brought on a couple of our teammates who are still with us today. We got some users. We had a very passionate audience. They loved the platform, but it wouldn’t scale to millions of users for it to be a viable business. That was clear. We did go through the process of learning how to build and bring a product to market. We learned from that experience what was happening in the music space, which led us to our second product.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping, Fund Raising and Exiting with Sefaira

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

Co-founder Mads Jensen started working on Sefaira while an MBA student at INSEAD Business School. When we spoke in 2016, he had gone on to launch a sustainable architectural design software product, raised $18 million in funding, and exited the company. Read on for more.

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?

Mads Jensen: I was born and raised in Denmark. I’m from a family with several generations of entrepreneurs. I grew up with business in my blood. I was fortunate enough that my grandfather, in the early 80s, thought this computer thing might have some potential. He bought me a computer when I was quite young. All kids these days grow up with computers.

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Thursday, December 9 – 556th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 556th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, December 9, 2021, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 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!

Non-Technical Founder Scaling SaaS Venture to Exit: Velocify Founder Jeff Solomon (Part 3)

Jeff Solomon: A buddy of mine went to get his MBA. He was also an engineer. He was working on the side for me. When he graduated, the one thing that he learned was that to build a scalable business, you needed an asset.

Sramana Mitra: Not just services.

Jeff Solomon: He came to me and said, “This service business is cool, but you need to do something that is going to have some real equity value. He suggested a SaaS business. I went to look at all the projects I’ve been doing. I saw some similarities. We were doing a lot of the same things for a lot of similar clients. I started to think about a SaaS application that we could build for these people. That was how Velocify was born. We worked nights and weekends on Velocify while we were consulting for other companies. After six months, we launched this SaaS lead management platform.