Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped from Belgium to Exit

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  iText CEO Bruno Lowagie bootstrapped a highly profitable company from Belgium. Since our conversation in 2015, iText was acquired by ThinkFree in 2018. Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Bruno Lowagie: I’m from Belgium. Sramana Mitra: I’m married to a Belgian. Were you born and raised in

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Best of Bootstrapping: iText was Bootstrapped from Belgium

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  iText CEO Bruno Lowagie bootstrapped a highly profitable company from Belgium. Since our conversation in 2015, iText was acquired by ThinkFree in 2018. Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Bruno Lowagie: I’m from Belgium.

Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What about business strategy? Not every company can, by the nature of their business, grow to $500 million. That’s what the VCs are looking for. By the nature of your business, how big a business can you build? Bruno Lowagie: If we continue what we are doing now, I don’t think we’re going

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Belarus is not your own division? Bruno Lowagie: No, it’s not our own company. It’s a company with a subsidiary in Belgium. We pay the Belgian company but the people who work on iText are in Belarus. Sramana Mitra: How has revenue ramped? Bruno Lowagie: I believe that in 2011, we finished with $2.4

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Were you still in Gent? Bruno Lowagie: I was still in Gent and we’re still in Gent. In 2009, the list was finished and we didn’t find any new customers. We then made a bold move. We changed the old version of iText from the LGPL/MGPL to the AGPL. That’s a more viral license.

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 4)

Bruno Lowagie: I asked what we can do to solve this. IBM said, “We have to do it the hard way.” Actuate was a company under the Eclipse umbrella. They entered a research agreement with Gent University. The deliverable was an IP overview. During 2007, I went to the university to do my job but as soon

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was this something that you created on the side? It was your own intellectual property. Bruno Lowagie: Yes. Sramana Mitra: This was in 2000? Bruno Lowagie: Yes. Sramana Mitra: What does that first release mean? Did you give it to the open source? Bruno Lowagie: I released it initially in LGPL library but then a

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Then what happens next? Bruno Lowagie: I had three different jobs in the first two years of my career because I saw myself as a guru. When I went to a job interview, I said, “I want to be the guru in something.” Obviously, they said, “We don’t need a guru. We need somebody

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