Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenue level did you get to?

Victor Allis: Ultimately in 2014, we had $100 million.

Sramana Mitra: What are the inflection points? You remember the milestones really well.

Victor Allis: The first one was in December 2000. The Dutch Railways was looking for a solution. It wasn’t part of my scope. My scope was manufacturing and trucking companies. We had never thought about Railways.

Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of companies were these seven companies that you invited? Were they logistics companies?

Victor Allis: One was in the Rotterdam harbor; they unloaded ships. They told us that it’s a unique process and there was no product that could handle that. Then there was another one. It was a copper factory. We said that our product is so flexible that, no matter how crazy your process is, it will fit in our software. That was true. That was the unique thing. We made very flexible software.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services from Sweden

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

European entrepreneurs often bootstrap using services successfully. The chasing of investors from the get go is less prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic, although this obsession from Silicon Valley has traveled to all corners of the world now. Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo shared their journey in 2016, when they had crossed $7 million in annual revenue with minimal outside financing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. It sounds like, Tobi, you’re the founder. Maybe, we’ll start with you and let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Tobi Andersson: I was born in Sweden, in the Swedish countryside. Very early on in my life, I decided that one day I would like to earn the money to have the opportunity to buy a really big farm. That has always been my vision – to create something that, on one hand, can give me money but on the other hand, I can create opportunities for people to develop. I’m very much like HR focused on life. I would like everyone an opportunity to feel that they have a good life.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What you’re describing is a track that we have called bootstrapping using services. It’s a tried-and-true path in which a lot of entrepreneurs have built companies. We have great regard for this method.

The services work, I understand. The product that you were developing, what was going to be in that product? How well did you understand the product, the requirements, and the positioning? What problem were you going to solve? How well did you understand all that?

Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 1)

Victor bootstrapped Quintiq to $30M, raised funding, and then sold the company for over $300M. ActiVote is his second startup, currently self-funded.

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

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Fast Growth Company Using Services

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

Gurman Hundal, Co-founder of MiQ, had bootstrapped a fast growth company using services when we spoke in 2016. Read about his impressive journey.

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

Gurman Hundal: I was born in England in a town about 30 miles from London. My family is from the northern state of Punjab in India. Even though I was born in England, I couldn’t speak English till I was about six years old. I have a British-Indian upbringing. My parents owned their own shoe shop in a shopping mall near where we live. I got an early exposure to family-run organizations. I went through the educational system within England. I went to University of Kingston where I studied Business. It was there where I started my career.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping with Services to $12M

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

You know that we believe in the Bootstrapping Using Services methodology quite firmly. Here is Square Root Founder Chris Taylor’s story from 2016 – a great example of how and why bootstrapping using services works.

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

Chris Taylor: I grew up in rural West Virginia. You won’t meet a lot of entrepreneurs out of West Virginia. When I was four, my father passed away, so my brother and I were raised by our mother. She did a fantastic job. My brother is also another entrepreneur. In college, I went to Carnegie-Mellon and studied Computer Science, Psychology, and Mathematics.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services First, Raised Money Later

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

Rich Waldron, Co-founder and CEO of Tray.io, was building an authentic tech company from London when we spoke in 2020. While the company could have become a so-called Unicorn by loading up on liquidation preferences, they chose not to do so. Excellent story.

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

Rich Waldron: I was born in the UK in a place called Southampton, which is right down on the South Coast. Its most famous claim to fame is where the Titanic set off from. I was born there 35 years ago.

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