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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 an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Where are you right now revenue-wise? Kristin Quinlan: Last year, we were at $23.2 million. We’re on course to do, at least, $27 million this year. We can be as high as $30 million. Sramana Mitra: Is this a highly profitable business? Kristin Quinlan: Yes, it’s highly profitable. All of our growth has
Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Besides that differentiator, how do you acquire customers? Kristin Quinlan: A lot of our growth has been through outreach from our sales team as well as from leveraging the relationships with one entity and being recommended to others. We are really good at what we do and we have got an exceedingly strong
How to Manage A Successful Pivot: Bullhorn CEO Art Papas (Part 1)
When Art started Bullhorn, the first idea didn’t stick, and much of the venture capital raised during the first dotcom bubble was exhausted. Read how Art pivoted out of that bind, bootstrapping his way to success. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born
Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: You came on board in 2000. The business was about $1.9 million. Kristin Quinlan: Yes. In 2001, it was about $1.9 million. We had a slow incline. We’ve never had a year that has gone down. Every year has been an increase from the previous year. The first early years were very slow.
Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: We’re doing an Entrepreneur Journey story. We’ve got to focus on a bit more chronological telling of the story of how you put one foot before the other. I realized that you didn’t become the CEO of the company until 2006 but I do need to capture some of the beginning story of
Successful Pivot to $5M in Revenue from Chicago: Cohesive Networks CEO Patrick Kerpan (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: How many customers do you have now? Patrick Kerpan: We’ve got more than a thousand connected customers. We don’t get visibility in some of them because with some partners, we only get the net dollar. We used to be able to track every customer and knew every use case they were doing. We just
Bootstrapping an Evergreen Business From Oregon: Kirstin Quinlan, CEO of Certified Languages International (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page. There is a trend among entrepreneurs wanting to keep running companies without seeking an exit. Certified Languages International (CLI) is one such evergreen company. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where
Successful Pivot to $5M in Revenue from Chicago: Cohesive Networks CEO Patrick Kerpan (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: You said you pivoted and there was one product that you had to sell and the other product people wanted to buy. Talk a little bit more about how you proceeded from when you hit that realization? How did you move? How did you take advantage of the market pull that you discovered?
