Bootstrapping to 25 Million, Then Raising A 23 Million Series A: Coverity Cofounder Andy Chou (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: From a computer science point of view what was it that you were doing? How were you solving the problem? Andy Chou: In the world of static analysis the idea is to take the source code for a program, dissect it and digest it, and then analyze all of the different paths through

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Bootstrapping to 25 Million, Then Raising A 23 Million Series A: Coverity Cofounder Andy Chou (Part 1)

Andy Chou is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Coverity, a development testing company. Prior to co-founding Coverity, Andy was instrumental in developing the core intellectual property behind the Coverity platform while earning his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. He has also developed key innovations in Coverity’s industry-leading static analysis technology. He

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Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You clearly entered this business with a tremendous amount of knowledge of affiliate marketing. Can you talk about how you have used that skill set for customer acquisition for SlimWare Utilities? Chris Cope: We had an affiliate program, but we are looking now for channel partners. Our overall strategy is brand equity. We

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Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is your premium strategy versus free product strategy? Chris Cope: Our free products are designed to give consumers a chance to try the product. The premium cleaning product is $34.95, and we have around 100,000 customers. Our premium drive app sells at $29.95 and while it does not have as many users,

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Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What drove your decision to focus on PC drivers as the first aspect of SlimWare Utilities? Chris Cope: There were a lot of people who needed a solution. If the driver solution worked well when no other products did, we would attract the hardcore PC enthusiast group to use our other utilities as

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Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When did you start SlimWare Utilities in its current incarnation? Chris Cope: In 2006 Amazon launched the first accessible cloud infrastructure. The cloud has always been around forever, but what was neat was that with them you were only paying for virtual machines and the bandwidth that was actually used. We were able

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Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: After you obtained information to determine which products were doing well on the Internet and which ones were failing, how did you use that data? Chris Cope: I used it in several different ways, primarily as an affiliate, and I did pretty well for myself. Sramana Mitra: Did you simply identify the top

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Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Where you actually making money on the affiliate programs? Chris Cope: Yes, I was making money. I am not sure the companies were doing all that well in the end. Back then you got paid just for sending traffic. A registered user might be worth a dollar.