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- The Startup Velocity Question
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Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Taylor has bootstrapped Wiredrive over a 17-year period to about $10 million. Today, he has options ahead to grow organically or raise money. Either way, an interesting journey. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were
Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking when you became profitable? Guy Mucklow: It was four years after we started, so 2005. It’s interesting because it begs the question of going down the VC route or bootstrapping. Increasingly, a lot of tech entrepreneurs that I meet who have taken funding regret doing that. I know
Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What kind of conversion rates did you experience? Are you willing to discuss that? Christian Vanek: Sure, we’re an open book. From our website, we have about 1% conversion rate of visitors to trial or free customers. From free customers to paid customers, we have about 0.7% conversion rate. For our trial customers that come
Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: How much were you selling for? What was your business model and pricing model? How were you monetizing your product? Guy Mucklow: I might have mentioned earlier that we had two main licensing models in the early days because we saw mass market potential for this kind of service. We looked to go
Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: I have a few questions on this. First, talk to me about your freemium strategy. What did you offer for free and what did you offer for premium? Christian Vanek: What we offer for free now is probably too much. That comes back down to the cultural problems in my organization. I tend
Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: You’re saying that your main competitive strategy in winning accounts that would use your software for their sales enhancement process was to find them through different channels where you were not facing competitors? Guy Mucklow: Largely. I guess, it was also about the way in which we sold. We had a major focus on delivering
Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: You said you that you rank in the first three search results for survey software. As you said, there is lots of competitors. Why do people buy your software over your competitors? What is the key positioning point that you win on? Christian Vanek: We serve two markets. The first market is definitely
Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Tell me about how you sell. Whom were you selling to? What was the sales decision making cycle? Guy Mucklow: Our main target audiences were e-commerce businesses. Another really important learning and a key theme that underlines and underpins our whole business is about choosing your routes to market very carefully. Most of our