If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Bay Dynamics Co-founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte wanted to work together on a new venture. They first built a services company, then introduced an OEM product, and eventually bootstrapped a product under their own brand. When we spoke in 2016, the company had just raised
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Bay Dynamics Co-founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte wanted to work together on a new venture. They first built a services company, then introduced an OEM product, and eventually bootstrapped a product under their own brand. When we spoke in 2016, the company had just raised
Sramana Mitra: Talk about the new product, and how did you identify the new product definition? How did you achieve product market fit? Ryan Stolte: Through this relationship we had and the amount of breadth of customers that we were exposed to, we did get in front of a lot of these customers. They would
Sramana Mitra: How did you price this new product? Feris Rifai: The original OEM agreement started out as a royalty fee. The Symantec folks were selling it directly to the client. That grew from there to cover more of the Symantec portfolio of products. It also grew to Symantec actually including it in their product
Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I got this. You had a bunch of partners and you were doing value-added type of work for these people? Ferris Rifai: It was not reselling. It was more services-focused. They would use us as an extension. Sramana Mitra: In that process of doing integration and consulting, it sounds
Sramana Mitra: What year did you start this consulting company? Ryan Stolte: 2001. Feris Rifai: Precisely on October 16, 2001. Sramana Mitra: You did analytics consulting. How long did you continue in this consulting mode? Ferris Rifai: When we first started, we started with consulting in analytics and, in parallel, information security and IT. What we saw
Sramana Mitra: You were Head of Technology there and Feris joined as the Head of Sales? Feris Rifai: Yes, I joined as Head of Sales and Business Development at that time. Sramana Mitra: What is the name of the company? Ryan Stolte: The company is called Caspio. Sramana Mitra: Caspio is still around? Ryan Stolte: It
Sramana Mitra: Just one little piece of information, did the previous company where you were head of sales exit? Feris Rifai: Yes, it was a sale to another company. Sramana Mitra: Was it a good exit? Did you make money off that company? Feris Rifai: Yes, it wasn’t just through the exit. I had done