Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay at Facebook? Eric Frenkiel: Not very long, it was for 10 months in total. It was an amazing opportunity. We ultimately left Facebook because we had a bigger opportunity that we wanted to build. That was MemSQL. We joined in 2010 and left in early 2011. That was a
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Bhavin Parikh and his now departed co-founder Hansoo Lee have built Magoosh with textbook diligence and great discipline. Along the way, Hansoo died of lung cancer, a tragedy that hangs over the company both as misfortune and as inspiration. Read this wonderful story of young Berkeley
Bruno has bootstrapped a highly profitable company from Belgium. Now what? Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Bruno Lowagie: I’m from Belgium. Sramana Mitra: I’m married to a Belgian. Were you born and raised in Belgium? Bruno Lowagie: Yes, I was born in Ypres, which is in the west of Flanders. I lived there until
Eric and his co-founder Nikita left Facebook to join YCombinator to develop their idea for MemSQL. The company has blossomed into a robust enterprise software business with a solid customer base. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind
Sramana Mitra: When you win big deals with enterprise customers, what is it that allows you to win these deals? Steven Boye: It is typically the quality of our products. Everybody that we compete with, they are currently Dropbox or Box users. Most of them are. For some reason, they like our solution better. Sramana Mitra:
Sramana Mitra: How many telcos do you have as customers today? Steven Boye: I think we have three today. AT&T is the biggest. What we’ve learned is that telcos are hard to work with. They are good once they engage, but it’s really a long sales cycle. In the years since, several things have happened.
Sramana Mitra: What is your plan going forward? You’re about $16 million. The market has appetite for what you bring to the table. Is it just basically doing more of the same thing? Is that an accurate summary of what your game plan is? Chuck Bloomquist: I definitely want to continue and expand in different
Sramana Mitra: That brings us to what? Steven Boye: Now we come up to 2006. We actually got funding from a company called Clearstone Venture Partners in LA. During 2006 to 2008, we also got Intel Capital and Cisco as strategic investors. Now, we started getting real money to build the company. Sramana Mitra: What was