Surviving The Dotcom Crash And Building A Sustainable Business: LivePerson CEO Rob LoCascio (Part 5)

Sramana: What has your pricing model evolved to today? Rob LoCascio: We have three product lines. We have a small business, mid-market, and an enterprise product that are sold by the seat on a monthly basis. Small businesses pay anywhere from $99 to $1,500 a month. Mid-market businesses pay anywhere from $149 to $6,000 a month. Enterprise customers pay

Read Full Article »

Surviving The Dotcom Crash And Building A Sustainable Business: LivePerson CEO Rob LoCascio (Part 3)

Sramana: How much were your early small business customers paying for your product? Rob LoCascio: At that time they were paying that much, somewhere between $100 and $200 a month. We had the idea back then that it would be best to receive a monthly fee rather than a one-time software fee. That is something

Read Full Article »

Surviving The Dotcom Crash And Building A Sustainable Business: LivePerson CEO Rob LoCascio (Part 2)

Sramana: At that point what was your thesis about LivePerson? What vision did you have of the concept? Rob LoCascio: There was not a thesis. The Internet was just starting. In 1995, I noticed businesses on the Internet, but there were no people.

Surviving The Dotcom Crash And Building A Sustainable Business: LivePerson CEO Rob LoCascio (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Rob LoCascio is the founder and CEO of LivePerson, a leader in Intelligent Engagement Solutions that help thousands of top brands and websites around the world monitor and connect to their consumers online. Rob is a serial entrepreneur and sold his first company, IKON, in 1995,

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping A Latin American Social Networking Powerhouse With 50 Million Users: Sonico CEO Rodrigo Teijeiro (Part 7)

Sramana: When you realized you were losing $270,000 a month, what actions did you take? Rodrigo Teijeiro: I fired 25 people of the 90 that worked for me and hit the brakes on expenditures. After a couple of months, I came to the conclusion that we could do two specific businesses to monetize the traffic

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping A Latin American Social Networking Powerhouse With 50 Million Users: Sonico CEO Rodrigo Teijeiro (Part 6)

Sramana: Did you raise funds in Buenos Aires? Rodrigo Teijeiro: No, I went directly to Silicon Valley. Sramana: Tell me a bit about what you saw when you came to Silicon Valley to raise money with a Latin American business. Rodrigo Teijeiro: Normally I decide what I want and go after that directly. In this

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping A Latin American Social Networking Powerhouse With 50 Million Users: Sonico CEO Rodrigo Teijeiro (Part 5)

Sramana: How did you go from running a calling card site, e-card site, and birthday alert system to building Sonico? Rodrigo Teijeiro: In 2007 we were observing MySpace. We realized it was not a difficult site to build. I had the team and the knowledge as well as the marketing skill. We investigated the product

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping A Latin American Social Networking Powerhouse With 50 Million Users: Sonico CEO Rodrigo Teijeiro (Part 4)

Sramana: How big is your calling card business now? Rodrigo Teijeiro: The calling card business became an $8 billion business with very big profits. While running that calling card business, I noticed something interesting. I was always trying to optimize the buys off the website, and I noticed that one type of site that would

Read Full Article »