Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Significant Software Company from Australia

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

When we spoke in 2015, Emagine CEO Dave Peters had managed to bootstrap a significant software company from Australia. The focus was on TELCO churn management, and the customer base was primarily Australian, Asian, and African. Read this interview to learn more of the nuances. In September 2017 Emagine was acquired by Comviva.

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

Dave Peters: I’m Australian. I grew up in a little town of 8,000 people, about five hours west of Sydney. It was a farming community and my father was an Anglican minister. That’s a pretty unlikely starting point for an entrepreneur.

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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Kristen Valdes, CEO of b.well Connected Health (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What portion of your solution is productized versus custom-designed through professional services?

Kristen Valdes: We are committed to being a technology platform and not a service company. There are customizations that our client needs because they’re at various stages of maturity in the technology they have internally. We try to limit that. Our team is focused on KPI and OKR where we have feature flags that can be turned on or off because our customers are at different stages of readiness.

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From Student Entrepreneur to a $15 Million Revenue Ultralight Business: Stephanie Madesh, CEO of Kalon Clothing (Part 1)

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

Stephanie was a Sophomore in college when she started her venture.

Wonderful story of a student entrepreneur growing into a multi-million dollar ultra-light e-commerce business.

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?

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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Kristen Valdes, CEO of b.well Connected Health (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the top actions they take?

Kristen Valdes: It’s all over the board. We look at this as a digital persona. Healthcare has historically targeted individuals and looked at risk based on things like the zip code, age, presence of chronic condition. When we think about a digital-first experience, there’s a whole new set of profiling that needs to be done for individuals. I may be a caregiver first. That means that you need to prompt me with, “What is my healthcare need?” before you start to target things that I need.

From Student Entrepreneur to a $15 Million Revenue Ultralight Business: Stephanie Madesh, CEO of Kalon Clothing (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your business is the plus size?

Stephanie Madesh: From 2x up, we run about 30%. Men’s is higher – about 35%. We go up to 4x for men’s. For women’s, we go up to 2x on a knitted item and 4x for the rest.

Sramana Mitra: What other categories are big winners for you?

Bootstrapping to $10 Million Using Services: Sameer Maggon, CEO of SearchStax (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the pricing?

Sameer Maggon: The first offering that we sold was for about $10,000 a year. 

Sramana Mitra: How did that business ramp? When you start off with a bootstrapping with services model, your services revenues far outpace product revenues. Gradually, it starts to tilt.