Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 5)

Sramana: Are you saying that a small publisher could get on your platform and use your technology to sell directly without having a large sales force? John Ramey: Yes, that is correct. The majority of our publishers do not have salespeople. Our largest ones do, but the point is that publishers can participate without having

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Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 4)

Sramana: Was the core idea that resonated with TechCrunch the concept of helping core publishers sell their inventory directly via your platform? John Ramey: That was a big part of it. Our audacious goal was to create a true platform, an infrastructure layer, for advertising. Direct sales for web banners is a microcosm on top

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Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 3)

Sramana: Let’s talk about how you oriented yourself to establish isocket. You had received multiple points of validation. What was your next step? John Ramey: All of this had occurred in Bloomington, Indiana, which was a college town in the middle of nowhere. There is no web community or startup vehicle out there, but I

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Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 2)

Sramana: You started developing software for real estate during the real estate boom. How did you handle the crash that came shortly afterward? John Ramey: We knew that the real estate market was going to tank coming into 2008 and had decided to start developing software to address the problem of finding and buying premium

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Helping Publishers Monetize Premium Ad Inventory: isocket CEO John Ramey (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  John Ramey is the founder and CEO of isocket, a company that offers premium ad inventory solutions. Prior to founding isocket, he was one of the founders of Maven Ventures, which offered direct marketing software for real estate investment. He founded his first company, Lythargic Media,

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Testing the Cloud: SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos (Part 7)

Sramana: Your pricing model is good because it is adaptable to companies of all sizes. Is it safe to assume that a company starting up with the expectation of ramping to 2 million users in a short time will be able to afford to access your service? Tom Lounibos: Absolutely. I think Amazon’s number one

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Testing the Cloud: SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos (Part 6)

Sramana: How have revenues ramped at SOASTA? Tom Lounibos: We are still under $20 million  in revenue but have ramped up substantially over the past three years.

Testing the Cloud: SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos (Part 5)

Sramana: How do you compare to Mercury and Silk from a cost competitive standpoint? Tom Lounibos: We charge $1,500 an hour. They charge $60,000 an hour. There is a lot more to it, but that is the simple way to look at it.