categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
insidesales
Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Unicorn First Using Services from Utah
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Our tried-and-true mantra of Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later rings throughout Dave Elkington’s story. As the Founder of InsideSales.com, he used services to bootstrap a Unicorn that had raised close to $140 million in VC funding when we spoke in 2015. Revenue was scaling 100% year
Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Gabe Larsen, VP of InsideSales Labs (Part 4)
Gabe Larsen: When we look at the data, one of the things that makes really great sellers is the ability to accurately predict forecasts. In forecasting, you hear about happy years or people sandbagging. One of my favorite things is where you have a deal and you fall in love with the deal. It moves from
Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Gabe Larsen, VP of InsideSales Labs (Part 3)
Gabe Larsen: One of the things that we built into our dataset is this cross-company concept. Let’s say somebody places a phone call on our system to an individual in the East Coast, and that phone call reaches a disconnected phone number. Two days later when another rep goes to call that same phone number,
Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Gabe Larsen, VP of InsideSales Labs (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: I’m going to probe deeper. You’re saying that all the touch points are being captured. Are you recording the phone calls and doing speech-to-text? What is the level of capturing of the engagement? Gabe Larsen: We do actually record phone calls. It gets interesting, especially here in the States. You have to consider
Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Gabe Larsen, VP of InsideSales Labs (Part 1)
I did a startup in the area of Artificial Intelligence-driven Sales Prospecting in 1997. Much water has flown under the proverbial bridge. This discussion takes us to the state of the art, twenty years later. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to InsideSales. Gabe Larsen: Thanks for having
Bootstrapping a Billion Dollar Unicorn with Services from Utah: Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Are you building the whole organization in Utah? Dave Elkington: Yes. Here’s why. I’m maniacal about that. I drive everybody crazy. So much of a business, especially in hyper growth, happens ad hoc. It happens in the hallway. It happens in ad hoc meetings. If you distribute your leadership team, you impair them.
Bootstrapping a Billion Dollar Unicorn with Services from Utah: Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com (Part 6)
Dave Elkington: Everybody who was willing to give us term sheets were great firms but what mattered to me was the cultural fit. Ultimately, we did $35 million from US Venture Partners. It was because I had Steve Krausz and Dafina, who were one of the newer partners. They were the right people. I loved their
Bootstrapping a Billion Dollar Unicorn with Services from Utah: Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: We’re talking 2010 now? Dave Elkington: That experience was in 2011. Sramana Mitra: Where were you revenue-wise at this point? Dave Elkington: We were probably doing $6.5 million. A lot of companies in the SaaS space talk about bookings. When you’re bootstrapped, that gap is the only important thing that exists and most
