From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You were doing a hosted product until recently. Francis Dinha: Yes. Even Bloomberg came to us. They said, “What about if we license your software? We pay you half a million dollars one time.” I said no. Our model is subscription. Google was our customer for three years. They used our self-hosted solution.

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From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the current problem that you could solve in 2005? Francis Dinha: One of my friends started a company in Dallas. They were trying to solve the problem of circumventing the firewall. They raised about $35 million. He said, “How are we going to solve this problem?” I got this technology that’s

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From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do in your first venture? Francis Dinha: I gave Ericsson three months’ notice. I was going to build something related to switching while doing everything in software. That was my first venture where I made my first million dollars. Sramana Mitra: Who was the customer?

From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 1)

Francis has bootstrapped OpenVPN to $3M ARR with JUST $1M in financing. Wonderful story! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background? Francis Dinha: I was born in northern Iraq in a place called Amadiya. I lived there

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