Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How much investment did you get from Techstars? Nevin Shetty: Techstars always puts in $100,000. Sramana Mitra: How much equity did you give for that? Nevin Shetty: Around 7%. Sramana Mitra: You raised more money coming out of Techstars?

Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When you were starting to see this traction from Starbucks, KMPG, and other corporates, what kind of a business model did you follow in these deals? Matt MacInnis: We knew it was going to be SaaS. We gave Starbucks a very sweet deal. They got extra for the platform for all their district

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Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The customer acquisition is Facebook primarily? Nevin Shetty: It’s transitioning now to Pinterest. You have to think about where your users live. A lot of couples, who were recently engaged, go to Pinterest for inspiration for their wedding. As they’re looking for inspiration for their wedding, they see Blueprint there. Potentially, they come bock to Facebook

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Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of B2C traction were you experiencing at this point? Matt MacInnis: Some titles performed very well. I should say that at some point in 2012, we also started doing non-academic content. Inkling is not an easy story to tell because we’ve adapted a lot. Sramana Mitra: That’s okay. That is exactly

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Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Facebook is unique in its targeting capabilities. Talk about how you took advantage of that. What was the segment you were going after? What segment was converting for you? What did you learn about these nuances of positioning? Nevin Shetty: As a wedding registry, we targeted people who were engaged. Sramana Mitra: The

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Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about the business model? Your hypothesis at that point was that you were going to digitize these textbooks, you were going to do the customer acquisition on the B2C side, and you were going to take a commission off that sale. What was the business model assumption with the publishers? Matt MacInnis:

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Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: One clarification, both you and Liz kept your jobs while you were raising this convertible note round. For the whole time? Nevin Shetty: Yes. That’s the amazing part. It was just the two of us working part-time. From across the nation, Lizzie had moved at this point. Sramana Mitra: Where is she? Nevin

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Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did they know about your software? Matt MacInnis: We found out later that they had discovered Inkling through a publisher who had gotten a job at Starbucks and looked at what Starbucks was doing every quarter by shipping binders out to their district managers. We were a software platform that lets you

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