Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services from Poland to a US SaaS Company

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

Booksy Co-founder and CEO Stefan Batory started a software development company in Poland with a few other partners. Today, he’s running a high-growth, VC-funded SaaS and marketplace business in the US. Awesome journey! Here is our conversation from early 2020, plus you can listen to our podcast interview from 2021 here.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Tell us where you’re from, where you were born, raised, and in what kind of background.

Stefan Batory: I’m from Warsaw, Poland. I was born and raised in one of the poorest parts of the country. I got a scholarship and went to a high school here in the US back in 1994.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Wiredrive Using Services to $10M

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

When we spoke in 2016, Co-founder Taylor Tyng had bootstrapped Wiredrive over a 17-year period to about $10 million. At that time, he had options to grow organically or raise money. Either way, an interesting journey.

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?

Taylor Tyng: I was born south of Boston, Massachusetts in a town called Duxbury. I was born the son of two entrepreneurs who went through a line of businesses from early plastic mold injection technology companies and ended up working in a luxury travel business. I got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug early. I was raised in a middle class setting and my parents made sure that they raised children who were thoughtful and mindful. I had a real good platform to practice at an early age. By trade, I’m a designer. Art and commerce has always been a big part of my life.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to an Awesome Business Model

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

We’ve shared many Bootstrapping Using Services case studies with you here, as well as in the book on that topic. Inspyrus Founder CEO Nilay Banker’s story is particularly interesting because of the absolutely awesome business model that Nilay and his team had implemented by the time we spoke in 2017. Read on!

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

Nilay Banker: I’m from India, born and brought up in Ahmedabad, which used to be a sleepy town when I was born and growing up. It has now blossomed into a sprawling metro. It’s one of the five largest cities in India. I had a very interesting childhood. I grew up in a family of professionals. My father is an architect. My mother is a doctor. Pretty much, every person in my family is a professional with very few people who are not doctors. I consider myself a black sheep in the family.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to a Public Unicorn

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

Bootstrapping with Services is a tried and true strategy, including for building Unicorns. In our 2012 story, Alteryx Executive Chairman, CEO and founding partner Dean Stoecker talks about raising a Series A with $10 million in the bank. Today, Alteryx is a $4+ billion market cap public company. Dean bootstrapped with services early on, and then raised VC money.

Alteryx is a leading software developer and a pioneer of agile business intelligence technology with analytics. Prior to Alteryx, Dean led business development efforts for Integration Technologies, a systems integrator, where he helped develop technology that automated the selection of cellular tower locations for telecommunications clients like AT&T. He also helped develop the first geo-coding engine tied to Experian’s real estate mainframe system, and he built a sophisticated flood certificate engine for a leading insurer. Dean also served as Vice President of sales at Strategic Mapping, and in various sales and strategic roles at Donnelly Marketing Information Services.

Sramana Mitra: Dean, let’s start at the beginning of your personal story. What is the context for your entrepreneurial journey? Where are you from?

Dean Stoecker: I grew up in a family business in Colorado. I would sit around the table every day and hear about the trials and excitements of owning a business. I went to school at the University of Colorado. I had the opportunity to travel the world through a program called Semester at Sea. That was where I got the idea that I wanted to have my own business. After I graduated, I moved to California and got involved in the information business.

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Bootstrapping Using Services and Piggybacking from Australia: StoreConnect CEO Mikel Lindsaar (Part 6)

Mikel Lindsaar: The really cool thing about StoreConnect business model is that Salesforce gets their license revenue and they get a very sticky customer who then is investing more into the platform. The partners love it because they get a client who has an upfront setup fee but has a part of their business related to that partner’s consulting revenue.

Bootstrapping Using Services and Piggybacking from Australia: StoreConnect CEO Mikel Lindsaar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Is this a global customer base?

Mikel Lindsaar: Yes. We’re focused on Australia while we were launching it, but we’ve got customers in America, and companies in Australia that have stores in Singapore, the UK, and Europe. We now have two or three partners in America. That’s all going to kick off this year as we do our America expansion.

The goal is to get it up to a point where someone acquires us. I’d be very surprised if Salesforce doesn’t acquire. It’s an SMB e-commerce solution that they don’t have. They can’t take their B2C solution and make it small business-friendly because it’s going to piss off their enterprise customers. They just can’t reprice it. StoreConnect has been interesting. Our first investor was our first client.

Bootstrapping Using Services and Piggybacking from Australia: StoreConnect CEO Mikel Lindsaar (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where did this idea come from?

Mikel Lindsaar: From the services business. reinteractive does a lot of customer applications connected to Salesforce.

Sramana Mitra: Are all your product ideas from your services business?

Mikel Lindsaar: MetaPulse was something that I always wanted to build. I created my services business so I can create MetaPulse. StoreConnect came out of reinteractive.

Bootstrapping Using Services and Piggybacking from Australia: StoreConnect CEO Mikel Lindsaar (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Even though you had co-founders, there was no outside money.

Mikel Lindsaar: Yes, everything was bootstrapped.

Sramana Mitra: You talked about four SaaS apps now. Three of them you exited, and one is still running.