Sramana: Did the companies you acquired have any investors? Flint Lane: They were sole proprietor places. They were small print-and-mail companies. There are hundreds of print-and-mail businesses out there. We targeted some smaller sole proprietorship companies that did print-and-mail billing. We can upsell the e-billing solution as well as automate their processes. We found several
Sramana: Has the print and mail revenue been a revenue mainstay from the very beginning of the business? Flint Lane: We needed a year because there is some infrastructure and equipment purchases that needed to be made to get the bills out the door. We were profitable within two years. We have been pretty profitable
Sramana: Are there other companies who offer outsourced electronic billing? Flint Lane: There are a handful out there. Kubra is based out of Canada who we probably see the most.
Sramana: What kind of companies tend to be good partners? Flint Lane: We tried going through accountants in the beginning, and what we discovered was that accountant drove payroll business because they did not want to do it themselves. The best partners for us are the accounting software companies. These are the companies between QuickBooks
Sramana: When you were doing that validation, who were some of the customers you talked to? Flint Lane: We targeted smaller companies in the beginning. That was a mistake. Yes, the problem existed for them. However, they were not willing to pay for it because it was not that big. If they had 50 invoices
Sramana: When you started PayTrust, the Internet was not as pervasive and consumers were not as mature as they are today. Flint Lane: That is absolutely true. There was not as widespread acceptance of financial services online. It was 1998, so the Internet was out there. There was a lot of noise about it, but
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Flint Lane is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Billtrust, a company offering B2C and B2B billing services. Billtrust has earned numerous awards from business organizations, including the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 500. Prior to founding Billtrust, he was the founder
Sramana: Where do you see AVG going from here? J.R. Smith: Moving forward, we have to figure out how to increase monetization of our users without charging them a dime. Our mantra is to ensure everyone is protected, paid user or free users. The more we move toward indirect monetization, the more we will be