Sramana Mitra: You said you’ve raised about $22 million. Let’s talk about other strategic moves during the past four years that you’ve been a venture-funded company. Robert Moore: One thing that we did quite recently that I think was very strategic in nature was we decided to release a second product. For most SaaS companies,
Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a little bit about the specifics. How long was the period where you worked with personal savings and what kind of numbers are we talking? How much of your personal savings did you have to put in to get it to some level? Tod Browndorf: Probably two years and about $100,000.
Sramana Mitra: What were your metrics when you were putting this round together? What kind of monthly revenue run rate did you have at that time? Robert Moore: At that time, we were less than a million in revenue. That would translate to something to the order of a hundred customers, or just below a hundred. We
Tod Browndorf: I ended up moving back to California. I went into a consulting business with a friend of mine. He was basically in high-end contingent workforce business. This is in the late 90s. We placed all sorts of different types of contingent folks inside companies. As a result, we placed instructional designers into companies that were looking
Sramana Mitra: During that first 18 months, did you figure out that e-commerce was going to be your top segment? Robert Moore: We did. E-commerce is a really good fit for what we can do because customers tend to come back and buy more than once. We always say that the best customers for us
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Tod has built an interesting online education company focused on specific niche course types. Read on to learn more. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Sramana Mitra: You got some little bits and pieces of revenues and customer validation going. What’s the next major milestone? Robert Moore: I mentioned that we were working out of my attic. What I didn’t mention is we didn’t have any air-conditioning in that attic. We started in October 2008. It was all well and
Sramana Mitra: Given that you know nothing about me and you’re showing me something that doesn’t work for me at all, how do you take a prospect like me and turn me into somebody who can actually find useful things on your site? Jeremy Young: You would have to give us your email address and