categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Jason has built a disciplined, profitable business and scaled it to $40 million in 2017 revenue. The company was first bootstrapped using services, and later raised ~$20 million in funding. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Ranker CEO Clark Benson (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Where to from here? You are profitable already. Is this a company that now stops raising money and goes to some sort of exit in the near term? Clark Benson: That’s a great question. We don’t have to raise money which is a great position to be in. I’m terrible at raising money,
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Ranker CEO Clark Benson (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Can you talk a little bit about how your investors are viewing the scale potential of your company given the business model that you’ve chosen. What are the discussions that you have with your investors regarding scale? Clark Benson: I need to explain something else to clarify that. Almost every other Internet publisher
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Ranker CEO Clark Benson (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: When did you launch Ranker? Clark Benson: We launched it in August of 2009. Sramana Mitra: When you launched, what was the reception in the market? Clark Benson: We launched the site with 20,000 lists on it. It started getting traffic. It took a few months to get search traffic. I’m not very
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Ranker CEO Clark Benson (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What was the business model? Clark Benson: We were living a little bit in a vacuum. The company had moved back to Chicago. I was in LA. I wasn’t very well networked in the Internet space at that time. There were very few internet companies in Chicago. My co-founders were not very well-networked.
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Ranker CEO Clark Benson (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What years are we talking now? Clark Benson: I launched the company in 1995. I started launching other businesses about a year and a half later. I opened up a record store with a friend of mine. That was somewhat of a mistake. I had that for five years. I didn’t make a
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Ranker CEO Clark Benson (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. “I hate raising money and I am not good at it…” – says Clark Benson, with a laugh. The company is growing nicely and profitably. Read on! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born,
Bootstrapping to $10 Million: Gesture CEO Jim Alvarez (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: As you have built this business, are you selling through the charities directly or are there channel partners? You brought up Ritz-Carlton. Ritz-Carlton holds a lot of charity events in its ballroom and so do many other luxury hotels on behalf of major charities. Jim Alvarez: Most of our business is gained directly
