Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Double click down on pricing. Now that you are getting these inbound leads and it sounds like you are not having too much difficulty closing the accounts, what’s the pricing?

Chris Sinkinson: We did start increasing pricing, but we were doing it wrong. We were charging an upfront setup fee and then a very small recurring fee for maintenance.

Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What is the timeline for when all this is happening? When did you start developing? When did you get it out there? When did you get this endorsement and this opportunity to be celebrated in front of all these universities? What is the timeline of when all this is happening?

Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So you didn’t need to use the Twilio API or anything. It was getting the data straight directly off the smartphone.

Chris Sinkinson: Yes. The smartphone geolocation data has latitude and longitude that we would send to a web-based dashboard. The campus security team had a map that showed a pin of where the call was coming from. While you were on the call, it would update that location. So if you were moving, that pin would move and then they were able to relay that to their response team.

Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about the process of zeroing in on AppArmor.

Chris Sinkinson: We often joke that if you want to start a business, you don’t need a great idea; you need ten great ideas because nine of them are probably going to fail. You might get one that actually works out and ends up being really good. That was certainly our situation.

Canadian Brothers Bootstrapping to $40M Exit: Chris Sinkinson, Co-Founder AppArmor (Part 1)

I always love Bootstrapping to Exit stories. Chris and his brother bootstrapped a wonderful startup and sold it for $40M. Read on for the nuances.

Sramana Mitra: All right, Chris, let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised? What kind of backgrounds?

Best of Bootstrapping: Co-founders Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to Exit

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

One Click Ventures Co-founders Angie Stocklin and her husband built a portfolio of e-commerce businesses using a very unusual strategy. I had a lot of fun learning about their journey back in 2016, and hope you will as well. One Click Internet Ventures was acquired by Foster Grant, International in July of 2018.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Angie Stocklin: I was born in a small town called Paisley in Indiana. It’s a town of about 2,500. My mom was a teacher and my dad is a farmer and somewhat of an entrepreneur in the fact that farming is a self-employed type of business. My dad and his brothers owned an implement dealership. They sold tractors. I grew up with a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. I went to college at the University of Evansville and started studying Psychology. I went on to get my Masters and my educational specialist degree in School Psychology. I worked as a school psychologist for three years before starting One Click.

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped First, Raised Money and Exited

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

“My journey was as unexceptional as you can imagine,” says Rukkus Founder CEO Manick Bhan, in describing how he got to $1 million annual revenue rate in transactions before raising financing. He shared the whole story with me in 2021. Rukkus was acquired in 2018.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by going back to your very beginnings. I want to hear about where you were born, raised, and in what kind of background.

Manick Bhan: Both my parents come from Kashmir. They raised me in Baltimore, Maryland. That’s where I was born. I’ve grown up mostly in the United States. In the very early days, I liked to take things apart. When I was nine, they bought me this bicycle. The first thing I did was I opened the whole thing up. I took out all the screws and basically dismantled the beautiful bike. They were a little horrified about it because it was a birthday present. This has been pretty constant in my life. I like to take things apart and figure out how they work.

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Tech Product Company from India

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Some of us have worked relentlessly for decades to bring about the change in India from a largely services-driven technology industry to one that today produces credible products sold all over the world. Ameyo is one of the early examples of this shift, and Co-founder CEO Sachin Bhatia is an early visionary in this journey. Ameyo was acquired by Exotel in 2021.

Sachin is also a long-term reader of this blog. It is always a great pleasure for me to do the Entrepreneur Journeys of my long time readers who have benefited from these stories and the invaluable lessons shared by so many entrepreneurs since 2006. This is our conversation from December 2020.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Sachin Bhatia: I was born in New Delhi, India. I graduated from IIT. I’m a computer science graduate. I did my Bachelors in Computer Science in 2001. I have my whole family in India. My father was in the manufacturing business. In our college days, we thought that India should make some more products. That is how the journey started. I started this with a couple of my batchmates at IIT. 

>>>