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- The Startup Velocity Question
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Managing Multiple Pivots While Scaling to $50 Million: MotionPoint CEO Will Fleming (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Website translation. Wow! That’s completely different. Will Fleming: It sounds completely different. Our target market for the brochures were the largest retailers in North America. We met with nearly every one of the top 20 or 25 retailers. We had great visibility into this common problem. It was interesting to us that all
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: When you say B2B, what kind of B2B? Did you go after commercial? Did you go after restaurants? Steven Annese: We did a lot of things. We instituted a pro-trade account. If you were a contractor or designer, you could basically sign up for our account. Once we scan the application and verify that
Managing Multiple Pivots While Scaling to $50 Million: MotionPoint CEO Will Fleming (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What happens after that? Will Fleming: In 1999, we hung up a shingle to be consultants. That was our way to be exposed to people and projects while we were trying to sort through what we were going to do next. We wanted to start another business. We didn’t have that business in
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: It looks like that at the end of 2006, you were back to being able to have multiple distributors for your business and were able to get back to your top ranking in Google bids. Is that correct? Steven Annese: Correct, in Google and Yahoo!. That was probably about 2007. Sramana Mitra: What
Managing Multiple Pivots While Scaling to $50 Million: MotionPoint CEO Will Fleming (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What was the idea in that business plan that you were signing up for? Will Fleming: The original idea was to introduce a unique product to certain types of retailers with an emphasis on convenience store chains, drug store chains, and grocery chains. The thought was that we would start with two particular
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: There’s an electronic integration that you were able to put in place with these distributors? Steve Annese: Yes, there was only one distributor at that time. Sramana Mitra: They were electronically and sufficiently together to be able to establish that bridge with you. Steve Annese: Yes. Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking?
Managing Multiple Pivots While Scaling to $50 Million: MotionPoint CEO Will Fleming (Part 1)
Will and his partner started with a somewhat flawed business idea, but has successfully built up to a $50M company. Along the way, pivots had to happen, and are still happening. Interesting study in customer-driven strategy. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born, raised, and in what
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How much inventory did you take on and how did you source that inventory? This is one of the key questions for every bootstrapped e-commerce entrepreneur. Steven Annese: When I first started, I didn’t take any inventory on. I basically had a drop shop agreement with a major distributor at that time that