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mindtouch
Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $12M+ and Exit
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Aaron Fulkerson Founded MindTouch, a company that offers a cloud-based self-service help center and knowledge-as-a-service platform. He grew the business to eight figures as a bootstrapped company with no venture, no debt. The company was sold to Nice Systems in April 2021. Here is our conversation
Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped MindTouch to $12M+ and Exit
Aaron Fulkerson Founded MindTouch, a company that offers a cloud-based self-service help center and knowledge-as-a-service platform. He grew the business to eight figures as a bootstrapped company with no venture, no debt. The company was sold to Nice Systems in April 2021. Here is our conversation from 2013. Sramana: Aaron, tell us where you are
Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 7)
Sramana: With $12 million, in revenue you can raise money anywhere you want. When a company has substantial revenues, they do not need to move to Silicon Valley to fund raise. Have you considered where you are going to look at raising money? Aaron Fulkerson: Making the decision to move to Silicon Valley or not
Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 6)
Sramana: There is also a difference between B2B and B2C oriented companies. In B2B there is only one metric: are customers willing to pay for what you are offering or not? In B2C it is a bit more complicated. There is free stuff flowing around, and you have to monetize through a variety of methods.
Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 5)
Sramana: What is your pricing model? Aaron Fulkerson: We price based on the value derived from the implementation, which is what I love about SaaS. You have to earn your customers’ business. If you don’t, then they turn you off. I have tried to make our pricing model entirely value based and tie the cost
Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 4)
Sramana: Do you make any assumptions about customer support agents? Do you expect that they will use this product as well? Aaron Fulkerson: Yes, and I will give you an example to illustrate this. A typical deployment by a software company will leverage our subscription payment system. It will typically start with one individual who
Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 3)
Sramana: It sounds like you avoided the problem of becoming diluted in a broad collaboration market by focusing on your original premise. Is that a fair statement? Aaron Fulkerson: Yes. We went back to what we were originally very excited about. This is a valuable lesson for other entrepreneurs. You will have investors and other
Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 2)
Sramana: When you started this project, what was going on in your mind? Why did you decide to tackle this particular problem? Aaron Fulkerson: I saw a problem I thought we could address. I had a bunch of friends who worked at WebSphere, and they had a couple of thousand people working on their project.
