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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
ecwid
Best of Bootstrapping: CEO Bootstraps Using Services to Millions from Russia
We’ve discussed Bootstrapping Using Services extensively over the years. Ecwid CEO Ruslan Fazlyev used eLance (not Upwork) to source service projects, then built, first a platform+services business that scaled to over $10 million in revenue. Then he spun off a pure play e-commerce platform business that now has over a million merchants using it. Revenue
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: What did you price the Ecwid product at? Ruslan Fazlyev: The model back then was one free plan and one paid plan at $70. The pricing model is a bit different now. Sramana Mitra: $70 a month? Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes, it’s different now. Now we have premium offerings. There are paid plans at $15,
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: You wanted to set the company for exit. Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes. Sramana Mitra: Where did you go to look for financing? Ruslan Fazlyev: I never really looked proactively for financing. The way it worked is, Ecwid was named as the hottest technology company in Russia after winning this competition by Google and Forbes in
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Not only did you have the platform but you were also offering the integrated consulting services to implement it. Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes, that was the X-Cart approach but it was not good enough for some customers. Some customers asked, “Is there any way to integrate my store into my site without ever having
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Do you remember the denomination of the customer? How much did the customer pay? Ruslan Fazlyev: I think it was $100 a license. I did my math quickly. Five cents investment for $100. Sramana Mitra: Amazing. Ruslan Fazlyev: My second 5-cent spend was disappointing because there was no customer, but my third spend
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you questions so that we can trace your journey of how you put this business together block by block. Tell me how you acquired your first customers for this business. Ruslan Fazlyev: We didn’t really acquire customers for our business. We got case-by-case freelance requests to build an online
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. We’ve discussed Bootstrapping Using Services extensively over the years. Ruslan used eLance (not Upwork) to source service projects, then built, first a platform+services business that scaled to over $10 million in revenue. Then he spun off a pure play e-commerce platform business that now has over
