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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: How did you price this new product? Feris Rifai: The original OEM agreement started out as a royalty fee. The Symantec folks were selling it directly to the client. That grew from there to cover more of the Symantec portfolio of products. It also grew to Symantec actually including it in their product
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I got this. You had a bunch of partners and you were doing value-added type of work for these people? Ferris Rifai: It was not reselling. It was more services-focused. They would use us as an extension. Sramana Mitra: In that process of doing integration and consulting, it sounds
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders, Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What year did you start this consulting company? Ryan Stolte: 2001. Feris Rifai: Precisely on October 16, 2001. Sramana Mitra: You did analytics consulting. How long did you continue in this consulting mode? Ferris Rifai: When we first started, we started with consulting in analytics and, in parallel, information security and IT. What we saw
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: You were Head of Technology there and Feris joined as the Head of Sales? Feris Rifai: Yes, I joined as Head of Sales and Business Development at that time. Sramana Mitra: What is the name of the company? Ryan Stolte: The company is called Caspio. Sramana Mitra: Caspio is still around? Ryan Stolte: It
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Just one little piece of information, did the previous company where you were head of sales exit? Feris Rifai: Yes, it was a sale to another company. Sramana Mitra: Was it a good exit? Did you make money off that company? Feris Rifai: Yes, it wasn’t just through the exit. I had done
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 1)
Feris and Ryan wanted to work together on a new venture. They first built a services company, then introduced an OEM product, and eventually bootstrapped a product under their own brand. The company has recently raised its first venture money after many years of being in business as a profitable, growing entity. Sramana Mitra: One
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: The scenario that you are pointing out is a scenario that a lot of venture-funded entrepreneurs face. Business is not the rocket that the VCs thought it would be, but it’s a healthy profitable long-term business that the entrepreneur may be interested in running. That’s a scenario where VCs and entrepreneurs have to
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: You had a $5 million round. You were pretty much profitable. What are some of the major inflection points? Jason Robbins: The $5 million basically almost disappeared. By the time money came in, the investors wanted a CEO that was known in the marketplace so they then can then raise the next round