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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
Leading Michigan’s Emergence as a Tech Startup Hub: Billhighway CEO Vince Thomas (Part 4)
Sramana: I like it when companies tightly segment the market; it is much easier to qualify leads and messages to that customer base. My next question is, how do you charge? What is your business model? Vince Thomas: There are three ways we charge. The first is a licensing fee to use the software. That
Leading Michigan’s Emergence as a Tech Startup Hub: Billhighway CEO Vince Thomas (Part 3)
Sramana: What experiments did you run during your early years of starting the company? Vince Thomas: I look at the world in terms of problems. As I walk through the world every day, my mind thinks of the world in terms of problems. When I saw the problem of managing shared bills, my first experiment
Leading Michigan’s Emergence as a Tech Startup Hub: Billhighway CEO Vince Thomas (Part 2)
Sramana: Tell me how you launched the business. You launched it in college to help roommates pay shared bills, and somehow it morphed into a business. What was that process like? Vince Thomas: I launched it from my college apartment. For me it was a humbling experience. I built Billhighway by myself for the first
Leading Michigan’s Emergence as a Tech Startup Hub: Billhighway CEO Vince Thomas (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Vince Thomas is the founder and CEO of Billhighway, a provider of cloud-based financial management solutions tailor-made for nonprofit, donor, and member-based organizations. He developed Billhighway in college as a way to help manage finances among college roommates and in the years since the company has
Bootstrapping to $35M via Affiliate Fees: Swagbucks Co-founder Scott Dudelson (Part 7)
Sramana: What is the most popular reward type? Scott Dudelson: Without a doubt it is the Amazon gift card. Gift cards in general are popular. Sramana: If you were able to give advice to another entrepreneur, what advice would you pass on? What were some of your biggest lessons learned? Scott Dudelson: We pivoted twice
Bootstrapping to $35M via Affiliate Fees: Swagbucks Co-founder Scott Dudelson (Part 6)
Sramana: You are sitting at $35 million in revenue a year. What percentage of that money comes from affiliate relationships? Scott Dudelson: The majority of the revenue comes from affiliate opportunities, although I do not have the exact percentage of that breakdown. We have recently brought on salespeople who are helping bring in more direct
Bootstrapping to $35M via Affiliate Fees: Swagbucks Co-founder Scott Dudelson (Part 5)
Sramana: What were the business models that you worked with for the incentive providers? Scott Dudelson: We just bought the gift cards and the award items. We did try to get free goods. We had a business model that supported itself. When a user took an action that generates us money, he or she would
Bootstrapping to $35M via Affiliate Fees: Swagbucks Co-founder Scott Dudelson (Part 4)
Sramana: It seems that the key differentiator with Swagbucks.com is that you have made a move to host a destination site, and you no longer rely on other brands to promote your service. Is that correct? Scott Dudelson: That is correct. In 2008 when we launched Swagbucks.com, we took control of attracting our own users.