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HOT TOPICS
- 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 a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 6)
Sramana: Can you talk about your experience of trying to build an executive team and scaling a company with a larger footprint? Also, where are you building the company? Christopher Aker: When the company had just three people, I moved back to New Jersey and that is where we established our offices. We are about
Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: I agree with you. Those are character traits that make great entrepreneurs. Without that, you’re not going to sustain because it takes a lot of work and energy. I’m trying to provide a framework that people can apply to ideas. David Steinberg: What I was going to say is the things that made
Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 5)
Sramana: Is there any kind of segmentation where you get the most customer traction? You have a fairly sizeable business at this point. What is the distribution of your customer base? Are there any sizing or vertical segments amongst your customer base? Christopher Aker: We track all of that stuff and we compare every couple
Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 4)
Sramana: You launched Linode in 2003. How did the company revenue ramp over time? Christopher Aker: For the first few years, we were constrained by the number of machines we could put online. We still managed to do 200% to 400% revenue growth year-over-year. It is a lot easier to do that when the numbers
Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Was this a company that you financed in any way or was it self-financed? David Steinberg: I maxed out my credit cards and tried to get some money from my family. They would not give me any initially. I then went to my stepfather and said, “This is what I want to do.
Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 3)
Sramana: Did you have any market validation of your new hosting business mode? Christopher Aker: I knew that it was going to work. I was very sure of it. Success by my measure then was maybe $100,000 in revenue a year in managed wordpress plans. Sramana: Were you doing all of this out of Nashville?
Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Today’s entrepreneurial landscape is full of serial entrepreneurs who start really young and build company after company. Some succeed and some fail. David’s four companies have all been successful. Sramana Mitra: David, where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What’s the back story?
Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 2)
Sramana: What were you doing at HealthStream? Were you part of the early team in any way? Christopher Aker: I was a technical employee and I was able to go through the IPO ride while I was there. We did not make any money there. We were the last tech company to go public just