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Scott Skinger
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 7)
Sramana: I think you have a tremendous advantage because you have 50,000 customers who already know you. They know what quality you deliver. They are your customers, and I think that is why you are getting the higher conversion rates. Scott Skinger: In our financial models we were trying to be conservative. We were looking
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 6)
Sramana: What assumptions are you making in terms of what percentage of your existing customer base will convert to the new business model? Scott Skinger: I have been very conservative building financial models. We did not have real data prior to the launch, and as of today I have 10 days of data collected. Prior
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 5)
Sramana: You mentioned that you now have about 55 employees. What are the functional skill sets of your employee groups? Scott Skinger: Over the last two years we have hired a lot of developers. Two years ago we had zero people on our development team, and now we have close to 15. We are a
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 4)
Sramana: Earlier you mentioned that you were making money by up-selling new products to your customer base. Where did your initial set of customers come from? Scott Skinger: My earliest customers came from a variety of sources for a variety of reasons. The organic traffic and pay-per-click traffic both brought in customers. In 2003 our
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 3)
Sramana: How did you take your initial courses to market? How did you access customers? Scott Skinger: In 2002 I was building courses. Before I could get a course to market, I ran up close to $120,000 in credit card debt. Sramana: Whoa! What were you doing with $120,000 of credit card debt? Scott Skinger:
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 2)
Sramana: How long did you continue in your certification teaching job? Scott Skinger: I worked at Computer Learning Center until it went out of business in 2001. I was still working as a network administrator. I moved on to work at an independent school as a technical instructor. I started working with more diverse curriculum,
Bootstrapping with $120k Credit Card Debt to $7m Revenue: Scott Skinger, CEO of TrainSignal (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Scott Skinger is the founder and CEO of TrainSignal, a Chicago-based company that makes computer training for IT professionals. Founded in 2002, it has grown to exceed $7 million in revenue after being bootstrapped on personal credit cards. Prior to founding TrainSignal, he was the president
