categories
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
Building a SMS API Company from London: Nexmo CEO Tony Jamous (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Tony Jamous is the CEO and co-founder of Nexmo, a company that hosts a cloud-based SMS API which allows high volume transmission of messages at wholesale prices. Tony spent 12 years in the wholesale messaging industry at mBlox and Paymo, where he opened mobile messaging and
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 7)
Sramana: I think you have a tremendous advantage because you have 50,000 customers who already know you. They know what quality you deliver. They are your customers, and I think that is why you are getting the higher conversion rates. Scott Skinger: In our financial models we were trying to be conservative. We were looking
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 6)
Sramana: What assumptions are you making in terms of what percentage of your existing customer base will convert to the new business model? Scott Skinger: I have been very conservative building financial models. We did not have real data prior to the launch, and as of today I have 10 days of data collected. Prior
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 5)
Sramana: You mentioned that you now have about 55 employees. What are the functional skill sets of your employee groups? Scott Skinger: Over the last two years we have hired a lot of developers. Two years ago we had zero people on our development team, and now we have close to 15. We are a
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 4)
Sramana: Earlier you mentioned that you were making money by up-selling new products to your customer base. Where did your initial set of customers come from? Scott Skinger: My earliest customers came from a variety of sources for a variety of reasons. The organic traffic and pay-per-click traffic both brought in customers. In 2003 our
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 3)
Sramana: How did you take your initial courses to market? How did you access customers? Scott Skinger: In 2002 I was building courses. Before I could get a course to market, I ran up close to $120,000 in credit card debt. Sramana: Whoa! What were you doing with $120,000 of credit card debt? Scott Skinger:
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 2)
Sramana: How long did you continue in your certification teaching job? Scott Skinger: I worked at Computer Learning Center until it went out of business in 2001. I was still working as a network administrator. I moved on to work at an independent school as a technical instructor. I started working with more diverse curriculum,
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Scott Skinger is the founder and CEO of TrainSignal, a Chicago-based company that makes computer training for IT professionals. Founded in 2002, it has grown to exceed $7 million in revenue after being bootstrapped on personal credit cards. Prior to founding TrainSignal, he was the president