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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 a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 7)
Sramana: Why did you make the decision to build your business without external financing? Christopher Aker: Once we started gaining traction, and once the industry woke up and realized where things were going, we have had incredible interest from VC firms. There has been a constant stream of phone calls and emails since the very
Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: That IPO was 2004? David Steinberg: That’s correct Sramana Mitra: You stayed with the public company till? David Steinberg: 2007. Sramana Mitra: Is that the timeframe in which you started the current company?
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?