Building a Portfolio of Bootstrapped Businesses: Ryan Millman, CEO of Undigital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Was there a business model? Were you monetizing? Ryan Millman: Yes. Initially, the business model was based on ad revenue – everything in 1999 was ad revenue-based. I figured out how to tie in with some APIs to one of the first digital photograph manufacturers. People could then order the photographs they were

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Building a Portfolio of Bootstrapped Businesses: Ryan Millman, CEO of Undigital (Part 1)

Ryan has built a portfolio of bootstrapped businesses over the last 25 years that adds up to over $50M in revenue. He discusses the strategies and nuances, pivots and positioning, and more.

Bootstrapping to Exit and Bootstrapping Again (and Again): Adam Robinson, CEO of Retention.com and RB2B (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Very good. So, this one is at $1.5 million already?  Adam Robinson: $1.7 million within nineteen weeks. It was very fast. It was just five people. Sramana Mitra: So that means this year is going to close at probably $5-$6 million, right?

Bootstrapping to Exit and Bootstrapping Again (and Again): Adam Robinson, CEO of Retention.com and RB2B (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about your LinkedIn strategy a bit more. So you said you have a follower count of 40K, or more? Adam Robinson: It’s over 90K now. It went from 20K to 40K in a week last September. Sramana Mitra: So you have 90K followers, presumably mostly B2B staff people. Adam Robinson: Almost

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Bootstrapping to Exit and Bootstrapping Again (and Again): Adam Robinson, CEO of Retention.com and RB2B (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So let’s go to the new one. What’s happening with the new one? Adam Robinson: I wanted to scale up Retention.com, but I’d never done it before, so I was very insecure about it. I convinced Santosh Sharan to join us as our COO. He’d helped ZoomInfo grow from $8 million to $100 million

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Bootstrapping to Exit and Bootstrapping Again (and Again): Adam Robinson, CEO of Retention.com and RB2B (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: This one is called Retention.com now, right? Adam Robinson: GetEmails at the end of 2022 focused only on these e-commerce stores. Then we added another product suite, which was a big product upgrade. Not only were we giving people emails to email for workflows like abandoned cart, abandoned product, or abandoned website, our

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Bootstrapping to Exit and Bootstrapping Again (and Again): Adam Robinson, CEO of Retention.com and RB2B (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Well, I think what you’re pointing out is that if your ad can rattle people enough to get them to comment, it’s with comments and discussions in social media posts that you get distribution. That’s what snowballed the algorithm distribution. So by rattling these people, you were getting that distribution. So whether people

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped an IoT Company from NC

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  North Carolina, at one point, had a large concentration of cellular technology companies. Some of that talent then came together around IoT, including Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions. He shared his journey with me in 2016. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of

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