Harman Singh: I’m a fundamental believer that this is going to go a long way. No matter how much I have in the business, it’s the reputation that’s going to be there forever—not the exit. That was the gist of the whole thing. We are where we are and the investors are happy. Sramana Mitra:
Sramana Mitra: How much were you charging? Harman Singh: On an average, $250 per educator per year. In those days, it was about $150. Sramana Mitra: It was a per educator pricing? Harman Singh: Yes. Sramana Mitra: When you worked the test prep academy, were they buying for multiple educators? What would a test prep
Sramana Mitra: I don’t know if you’ve read it, we’ve released a book called Bootstrapping Using Services where we deal with this topic extensively. We have companies that have gone up to $25 million in revenue using bootstrapping using services. This is a very viable strategy. However, you have to do it right. Harman Singh:
Sramana Mitra: The angels invested on what thesis? Typically, investors look for investment thesis. What was the investment thesis? Harman Singh: The thesis was that educators want to be connected to students over the Internet. That thesis never changed. The business model was unknown, but this thesis hasn’t changed. It wasn’t about B2B or B2C.
Sraman Mitra: In those four years, what kind of revenues were you pulling? How many people did you have? What was the scale of the business that you had built? Harman Singh: We reached about a couple of million dollars in revenue. Sramana Mitra: How many people did you have? Harman Singh: We had about
Sramana Mitra: What were the specs that they wanted? Harman Singh: There was a technology called Smile technology for education programs that wanted to deliver video-based along with some other content. These days, people would not know what that is. But in those days, it was really hot. We worked with professors and discuss what
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Harman Singh has put up a heroic effort to build a global education SaaS company from Chandigarh, India. Now, many years since his journey began, the company has started finding its stride. As the cliché goes, it’s a marathon, not a sprint! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at