College Bootstrapping Buddies: Grasshopper Cofounders Siamak Taghaddos And David Hauser (Part 6)

SM: Intuit does well because accountants and bookkeepers all know and use its product. They are all trained on QuickBooks, and they are not entrepreneurs. Even Microsoft could not penetrate that relationship. ST: It all depends on the services they’re going to provide to entrepreneurs. Intuit has done a great job and has been very

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College Bootstrapping Buddies: Grasshopper Cofounders Siamak Taghaddos And David Hauser (Part 5)

SM: How are you structuring your products as you spin them out of Grasshopper Labs? ST: We want brands that are self-sustaining. We are structured like Coca-Cola is. They are the manufacturing company and the flagship product. However, they also have other brands. Our virtual PBX is our flagship product, but we have other brands

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College Bootstrapping Buddies: Grasshopper Cofounders Siamak Taghaddos And David Hauser (Part 4)

SM: After the first year, what were some of your major milestones and challenges? ST: The primary challenge that we have had from day one is scaling the company without external financing. We continue to reinvest the money and make smart bootstrapping decisions.

College Bootstrapping Buddies: Grasshopper Cofounders Siamak Taghaddos And David Hauser (Part 3)

SM: The two of you worked on the project and did creative financing deals to get started. What time was this? ST: We got started in January 2003. At that time we set aside six months to focus on the technology and work with various vendors creatively. We did that from January to June and

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College Bootstrapping Buddies: Grasshopper Cofounders Siamak Taghaddos And David Hauser (Part 2)

SM: What were the dynamics of involving your family in your venture? ST: Entrepreneurship runs in my family. My father ran an accounting firm when he was young in Iran. He had been in a similar situation as David and I had.

College Bootstrapping Buddies: Grasshopper Cofounders Siamak Taghaddos And David Hauser (Part 1)

Siamak Taghaddos and David Hauser are both serial entreprenuers and co-founders of Grasshopper, which offers advanced phone capabilites to small businesses. Siamak oversees the strategic direction of Grasshopper and serves as the company’s brand visionary while David oversees the strategic direction and operations of Grasshopper and serves as the company’s technology visionary. They met as students

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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Playbook: ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo (Part 7)

SM: How do you conduct sales? SW: We primarily sell via telesales. SM: Are you able to sell to the enterprise accounts that way as well? SW: We do go visit them frequently. That is not a huge deal for us because we are organized by region.

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Playbook: ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo (Part 6)

SM: Essentially you are simplifying the detailed tactics of auction management and allowing companies to just focus on liquidating inventory? SW: We do. By packaging strategies which we can deliver as packages which enterprises can pull off the shelf, we allow the market to think about strategy versus worry about the detailed tactics of each

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