A Case Study In SEO And Affiliate Marketing: MyCorporation CEO Deborah Sweeney (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation Business Services, Inc. (“MyCorporation.com”). She has extensive experience in the startup and industry as she has been involved in the formation of hundreds of thousands of MyCorporation.com’s customers. Ms. Sweeney joined MyCorporation in 2003 after serving as outside general

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Bootstrapping To $1 Million, Then Growing to $40 Million: iContact CEO Ryan Allis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Part 7)

Sramana: How do you see the competitive landscape evolving? Ryan Allis: Microsoft left the market in 2005 and sold their customers to Constant Contact. They came back into business in 2007 and then left in 2008, that time selling their customers to us. Today we are the largest private company doing e-mail marketing. Our largest

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Bootstrapping To $1 Million, Then Growing to $40 Million: iContact CEO Ryan Allis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Part 6)

Sramana: How long did your Series A funding last? Ryan Allis: We ran on that money for three years. Last August, we closed a $40 million round of funding. My philosophy on venture capital is to never raise more than one time your annual revenue.

Bootstrapping To $1 Million, Then Growing to $40 Million: iContact CEO Ryan Allis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Part 5)

Sramana: What was your strategy for raising capital? Ryan Allis: I was 20 at the time. I had lunch with a friend who was a co-founder of PinPoint, which he merged with PowerByHand to form Motricity. He had raised a couple hundred million dollars for Motricity, and they were one of the most sought-after venture-backed

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Bootstrapping To $1 Million, Then Growing to $40 Million: iContact CEO Ryan Allis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Part 4)

Sramana: When did you hire your first employees? Ryan Allis: We hired our first employee in September 2003, three months into the business. He was an intern for the first month, and then after that we paid him $1,000 a month which was all we could afford. He did customer service and marketing, and he

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Bootstrapping To $1 Million, Then Growing to $40 Million: iContact CEO Ryan Allis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Part 3)

Sramana: Where did the money come from to get iContact off the ground? Ryan Allis: We bootstrapped for three years. Initially it was just the two of us, and we did not draw a salary. We were in downtown Chapel Hill. I lived in the office, so I did not have any rent personally. Aaron

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Bootstrapping To $1 Million, Then Growing to $40 Million: iContact CEO Ryan Allis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Part 2)

Sramana: What was going on in your life parallel to your young entrepreneur activities? Ryan Allis: I was a normal school kid living in Florida. I went to middle school and high school, and I worked when I could on the side. Throughout high school I did 40 or 50 websites and I started a

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Bootstrapping To $1 Million, Then Growing to $40 Million: iContact CEO Ryan Allis: Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Ryan is the co-founder and CEO of iContact, a provider of e-mail marketing software.. iContact currently has 300 employees, 700,000 users, and $50 million in annual revenues. Ryan has been an entrepreneur since he started Allis Computing at age 11 in 1995. He is an active

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