Sramana: Earlier you mentioned that you were making money by up-selling new products to your customer base. Where did your initial set of customers come from? Scott Skinger: My earliest customers came from a variety of sources for a variety of reasons. The organic traffic and pay-per-click traffic both brought in customers. In 2003 our
Sramana: How did you take your initial courses to market? How did you access customers? Scott Skinger: In 2002 I was building courses. Before I could get a course to market, I ran up close to $120,000 in credit card debt. Sramana: Whoa! What were you doing with $120,000 of credit card debt? Scott Skinger:
Sramana: How long did you continue in your certification teaching job? Scott Skinger: I worked at Computer Learning Center until it went out of business in 2001. I was still working as a network administrator. I moved on to work at an independent school as a technical instructor. I started working with more diverse curriculum,
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Scott Skinger is the founder and CEO of TrainSignal, a Chicago-based company that makes computer training for IT professionals. Founded in 2002, it has grown to exceed $7 million in revenue after being bootstrapped on personal credit cards. Prior to founding TrainSignal, he was the president