categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
entrepreneur journeys
Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: 1998 was when you started. How long from then did the sale happen? Dave Peters: I think it’s about 2000. Sramana Mitra: A couple of years later. Dave Peters: Yes. I was consulting the first year or so. Then, we started selling it. Sramana Mitra: How much were you charging for the product?
Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Did you spec out the software that you were going to build? Dave Peters: The way it worked was when I was in Paris, we built a custom-built software. I had actually licensed that software on an exclusive 15-year deal with that telco when I left. Because I didn’t have any capital, I
Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 1)
Dave Peters has managed to bootstrap a significant software company from Australia. The focus is on TELCO churn management, and the customer base is primarily Australian, Asian, and African. Read this interview to learn more of the nuances. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born,
Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: The sales model was inside sales, I presume, because of the price point that you quoted, yes? Jorn Lyseggen: Correct. Sramana Mitra: Obviously, you’ve grown at a very nice rate. You’ve self-financed this business. What else have you done from a strategic point of view that has helped you achieve this kind of
Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: In terms of customer traction, what did this altered process yield for you? Let’s say the first year of this altered process, how much did you sell? Jorn Lyseggen: Our sales was probably half a million dollars. Sramana Mitra: What was the pricing model? How were you charging? Jorn Lyseggen: It was a
Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (Part 4)
Jorn Lyseggen: We started approaching this in a completely different way. We tried hiring our own sales people. We wanted to engage the clients in a much more strategic way. Instead of talking about our product, we wanted to engage the clients on their domain and try to understand their pain. Once we understood their
Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What happens next? You’ve been running this public company? Jorn Lyseggen: Yes. I was a public CEO and experienced all the exciting stuff that it entails. After a while, I got eager to start a new company. I ended up starting Meltwater, which is the company I run today. Sramana Mitra: Meltwater was
Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What kind of clients were you working with? Were they Norwegian clients? What was the client pool at that point? Jorn Lyseggen: The client pool when I started out was Norwegian companies. We worked with the major banks. We worked with the major publishing houses and helped newspapers to create an online version
