If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. The theme of entrepreneurs building robust companies without outside capital continues with OnSIP Co-founder Mike Oeth’s story from 2015. OnSIP was acquired by an Apollo portfolio company in 2020. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your personal story. Where were you born, raised, and
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. The theme of entrepreneurs building robust companies without outside capital continues in OnSIP CEO Mike Oeth’s story. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your personal story. Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances? Mike Oeth: I was born in the MidWest,
Sramana Mitra: Let me understand the open source strategy a little bit better. You offer a portion of your technology as open source, right? Mike Oeth: Correct. Sramana Mitra: It’s a freemium open source model. You have other functionalities and features. It’s a classical commercial open source model. Mike Oeth: Right. On top of that,
Sramana Mitra: Interesting! What about financing? Did you, at any point, raise external financing? Mike Oeth: We did not. We have stayed completely self-funded. We see ourselves as a software company and we’re lucky enough to have software margins. We’ve been cash flow positive since 6 to 12 months of starting. Rob does the marketing and
Sramana Mitra: This went live in 2004? Mike Oeth: The company went live in 2004. The OnSIP Hosted PBX was October 2006. It was actually nice not being funded by VCs. We had the flexibility to change our business plan and go out and see what was working and what wasn’t. The SIP Trunking was
Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to? Mike Oeth: 2002. Sramana Mitra: Where were you located? Still in Connecticut or had you moved out by now? Mike Oeth: At that point, I had moved down to Yardley, Pennsylvania. RCN is based in Princeton, New Jersey; so for a while, I was commuting
The theme of entrepreneurs building robust companies without outside capital continues in the story of OnSIP. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your personal story. Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances? Mike Oeth: I was born in the MidWest, specifically in Speedway, Indiana. It’s the home of Indianapolis