Sramana Mitra: Let’s go down the path of your content marketing. You said you published a book. Tell us more about what was the marketing strategy around your code review product? Jason Cohen: I have to give credit where credit is due. In ITWatchDogs, Gerry had this idea because it had just become possible to
Sramana Mitra: Did you go to work for them? Jason Cohen: I did for just a little while, but at that time, I had already started another company with Gerry’s encouragement. In fact, when we started ITWatchDogs, I was hesitant to join a startup because I thought, “Maybe I should just increase my savings a little
Sramana Mitra: It is very difficult to get any kind of financing for new companies from these community banks. I’m curious about how you managed to get that. Was Gerry offering a personal guarantee of some sort to get that money out? Jason Cohen: Yes. He also had a history with the bank. Of course, you’ll
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Jason has done three bootstrapped startups, sold two of those, and then bootstrapped a fourth one to heavy duty venture financing. This is a great interview with a pro who knows what he is doing at many levels. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning
Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to hit the $1 million mark? Shane Evans: I think we would have come just under it in 2013. In 2014, we would have been $2 million. Sramana Mitra: In 2013, you were at $1 million revenue. At that point, what was the distribution between professional services
Sramana Mitra: I know quite a bit about that kind of work because I did a lead generation software company earlier in my career that required lots of scraping and cleaning. It’s quite complicated and it’s very domain-specific. I am very aware of how very complicated this is. Did you launch this with any financing
Sramana Mitra: What’s the next move? Shane Evans: Let me give a background about what happened at Mydeco so the next move will make a lot more sense. As part of the platform we were trying to build, there was a big e-commerce part. Part of that e-commerce component was we needed some data from
Sramana Mitra: What happens next in the story? Shane Evans: I was quite enjoying my time there. It turned into more of a big company. Once again, I found myself yearning for something that was a little bit different. I think it was late 2004 when I quit. During my time there, I had focused on