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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 7)
Sramana: We have a lot of entrepreneurs who are building companies outside of Silicon Valley. Summarizing your experience as an entrepreneur outside the Valley, you bootstrapped your company to the point of solid revenues and did late-stage financing with Silicon Valley investors. Clate Mask: Exactly. We were able to get enough traction such that when
Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 6)
Sramana: What was raising your first venture round like? Clate Mask: First, we developed our long-term strategy. We decided to build an integrated marketing and sales system that small businesses could use to grow their businesses quickly. We raised a small angel investment [round] in 2007, where we took on $500,000 as debt that we
Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 5)
Sramana: Let’s explore your friends and family round a bit more. Whom did you choose to approach, what kind of denominations did you take, and what were the pros and cons of your management of that round? Clate Mask: We could not get any banks to lend us any more money because we did not
Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 4)
Sramana: When you first started your PPC campaign, what was the lay of the land? What was your assessment of available keywords that were affordable for you to advertise with? Clate Mask: This was before the days of Google AdWords. Overture had a search term suggestion tool, and it was fascinating to see the number
Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 3)
Sramana: At that time, there was a lot of activity in CRM. What functionality did existing vendors miss? Clate Mask: Our customers were very small businesses, typically between two and ten employees.They needed e-mail marketing integrated with their customer relationship management. Our software program was as much an e-mail marketing program as it was a
Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 2)
Sramana: What did you do in 1999 when the company you were working for was acquired? What path did you take? Clate Mask: I stayed on board for another couple of years. About.com was the fourth-largest Internet company due to their roll-up of other companies. They were right behind Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. It was
Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 1)
Clate Mask, who has a JD and an MBA from Brigham Young University, is the co-founder and CEO of the fast-growth software company Infusionsoft. He is also the co-author of the New York Times bestseller “Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a Successful Small Business without Going Crazy.” Mask raised nearly $17 million in venture capital
40 Million Dollar Company, Paying Dividends, Growing Steadily: 3CInteractive CEO John Duffy (Part 7)
Sramana: Are the investors you work with accredited, or are they more friends and family without much of a professional investment angle? John Duffy: In most cases, we require people to be accredited investors. We have several professional investors on our cap chart, but their personal funds are used instead of having professional investors. But we