If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Victor Allis bootstrapped Quintiq to $30M, raised funding, and then sold the company for over $300M. ActiVote is his second startup, currently self-funded. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start from the beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Victor
Sramana Mitra: Is this a B2C business? Victor Allis: Yes, it’s for voters. The strange thing is, there’s no revenue. There is no business model at the time. All we’re trying to do is to get people to use it to vote. I always believe that if you do something that adds value, there’s always
Sramana Mitra: You took money from private equity that gave you some liquidity to the founders and gave you growth capital to move to the next phase. Victor Allis: Only liquidity to the founders. This is what was happening. I moved to the United States in 2010. We did a bit of press release. Suddenly,
Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenue level did you get to? Victor Allis: Ultimately in 2014, we had $100 million. Sramana Mitra: What are the inflection points? You remember the milestones really well. Victor Allis: The first one was in December 2000. The Dutch Railways was looking for a solution. It wasn’t part of my
Sramana Mitra: What kind of companies were these seven companies that you invited? Were they logistics companies? Victor Allis: One was in the Rotterdam harbor; they unloaded ships. They told us that it’s a unique process and there was no product that could handle that. Then there was another one. It was a copper factory.
Sramana Mitra: What you’re describing is a track that we have called bootstrapping using services. It’s a tried-and-true path in which a lot of entrepreneurs have built companies. We have great regard for this method. The services work, I understand. The product that you were developing, what was going to be in that product? How
Victor bootstrapped Quintiq to $30M, raised funding, and then sold the company for over $300M. ActiVote is his second startup, currently self-funded. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start from the beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?