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Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: From a customer acquisition point of view, how did you go to market? Ashik Ahmed: It was really, really hard. We spoke to a lot of customers. In the second round where we went for anyone can just sign up, you don’t need to get the word out. Back then, I don’t think
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Talk to us about the hiring of this CEO. What was the process that you followed and how did you decide who was the right CEO for you? This is a very difficult and challenging exercise to bring in an outsider to replace the founders. Heidi Jannenga: I want to be very clear
Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Did you fire the CEO that you brought on? Ashik Ahmed: Yes. Sramana Mitra: How did that go? Ashik Ahmed: Not pretty. I doubted myself whether I would be capable of being the CEO of this company. I didn’t even know what the job description of a CEO looked like back then. My
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: You’ve done all this organically. Right from the beginning, you didn’t raise any money. Heidi Jannenga: Yes, we are huge proponents of bootstrapping. We have been building it for four years. We’re profitable. Within two years, we were at a million dollar run rate. They passed the Affordable Care Act around the same
Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: From a vertical point of view, it was all in the hospitality area? Ashik Ahmed: That’s correct – all restaurants, bars, and hotels. That was the industry we were focusing on. Sramana Mitra: How many customers are we talking? Ashik Ahmed: By the end of 2013, I believe we only had 150. Sramana
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about customer acquisition. What did you start with? What worked and what did you settle into as your primary customer acquisition strategy? Heidi Jannenga: It’s a funny story actually. We built our own website from the very beginning. Back in 2008, there was not a lot of competition in SEO and
Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: This is an Entrepreneur Journeys story. I’m going to help you tell that story as a journey. You started with this concept back in 2008 with your co-founder. What was the first thing that you did? Ashik Ahmed: Coming up with the name. To be honest, I resigned from Aero-Care in February 2007 because I
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Let’s do this story a bit more as a journey. What year did you face the problem that you needed some sort of a system for managing your physical therapy practice? Heidi Jannenga: It was an ongoing problem from 2003 to 2008 where the company that I was working with had promised that