Bootstrapping Using Services: FullBottle CEO Reed Berglund (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The company didn’t work out. Reed Berglund: The company didn’t work out. We were ahead of the market. That’s one of the great lessons in my career. We were also trying to change buying behavior in a highly entrenched industry. Sramana Mitra: What happened next? Reed Berglund: We spun out of that company. One

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Bootstrapping Using Services: FullBottle CEO Reed Berglund (Part 1)

Continuing with our Bootstrapping Using Services theme, FullBottle is an interesting social media marketing venture that taps into the reach and engagement capacity of influencers to attract customers. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances? Reed

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Bootstrapping in Pennsylvania: OnSIP CEO Mike Oeth (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let me understand the open source strategy a little bit better. You offer a portion of your technology as open source, right? Mike Oeth: Correct. Sramana Mitra: It’s a freemium open source model. You have other functionalities and features. It’s a classical commercial open source model. Mike Oeth: Right. On top of that,

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Bootstrapping in Pennsylvania: OnSIP CEO Mike Oeth (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting! What about financing? Did you, at any point, raise external financing? Mike Oeth: We did not. We have stayed completely self-funded. We see ourselves as a software company and we’re lucky enough to have software margins. We’ve been cash flow positive since 6 to 12 months of starting. Rob does the marketing and

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Bootstrapping in Pennsylvania: OnSIP CEO Mike Oeth (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to? Mike Oeth: 2002. Sramana Mitra: Where were you located? Still in Connecticut or had you moved out by now? Mike Oeth: At that point, I had moved down to Yardley, Pennsylvania. RCN is based in Princeton, New Jersey; so for a while, I was commuting

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Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Given that it is such a high-touch customer service model, the question that I’m trying to ask you is. Right now you’re heavily venture-funded and you can finance your cost. At scale, does this company have the unit economics to become profitable? Ambarish Gupta: Well, that’s true. The unit economics of this product is

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From Friends and Family Funding to $30 Million Exit: Vertical Response Founder Janine Popick (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Very nice story. What are you up to now? Janine Popick: I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. I’m a marketer but I am also into product management and technology to grow small businesses. Maybe, something along those lines in a consultative fashion. It’s been 14 years so

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Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of companies do you recruit as channel partners? Ambarish Gupta: These are like a tiny version of SIs in India. SMBs in India for their technical support requirements depend on large local companies who for example distribute laptops, computers, and computer accessories. Sramana Mitra: How do you find them?