Bootstrapping a High Growth Cyber Security Venture with a Paycheck: Christian Geyer, CEO of ACTFORE (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So, what you’re describing is a very interesting scenario where you were able to incubate the company to a very large degree – $18.3 million revenue level within your parent company, and the board let you do that. It’s amazing that you were able to do this at this scale.

Now, how many people went with the spinoff – you and your co-founder and who else?

Bootstrapping a High Growth Cyber Security Venture with a Paycheck: Christian Geyer, CEO of ACTFORE (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Wow. So, by this time you have spun out into a separate entity?

Christian Geyer: Not yet.

Sramana Mitra: Not yet. So, this $18.3 million is happening within, as a subdivision of the original company. Okay, and you’re probably making a lot more money than the original company, right?

Best of Bootstrapping: Entrepreneurial Couple Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to Millions

Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani bootstrapped to multi-million dollars in revenue selling a private label product before quitting their jobs. In this story, you also get to see the nuances of running successful (and not so successful) crowdfunding campaigns. Their very interesting journey and insights were shared with me in 2021.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in background?

Kish Vasnani: I was born in Jaipur, India and moved to the US when I was about one year old. I grew up around the Atlanta area and finished school there. I moved to New York to help a friend of a friend start a software company, which was also bootstrapped. We were able to sell that to Thomson Reuters. I had the itch again to go out on my own. Very candidly, I was also fired from a couple of other jobs over the course of two years.

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Bootstrapping a High Growth Cyber Security Venture with a Paycheck: Christian Geyer, CEO of ACTFORE (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much did get paid by this customer that gave you the first use case?

Christian Geyer: I believe it was $300,000.

Sramana Mitra: And this $300,000 came into the original company?

Bootstrapping a High Growth Cyber Security Venture with a Paycheck: Christian Geyer, CEO of ACTFORE (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Were you aware of this regulatory requirement in your original business?

Christian Geyer: Yes. I was part of a cybersecurity incident response company back in 2016 at the Crypsis group I had talked about. We sold it for $260 million to Palo Alto Networks, a cyber security company.

Bootstrapping a High Growth Cyber Security Venture with a Paycheck: Christian Geyer, CEO of ACTFORE (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the subsidiary doing that warranted spinning it out into its own company?

Bootstrapping a High Growth Cyber Security Venture with a Paycheck: Christian Geyer, CEO of ACTFORE (Part 1)

Christian convinced the Board of his employer to let him incubate a Cyber Security startup idea as a division of the company with an express intent of spinning it off.

Now, the company has been spun out, doing almost $20M in bootstrapped annual revenue, and may soon find a lucrative Exit. This is a phenomenal story for entrepreneurs considering the Bootstrapping with a Paycheck route.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped with Services, Raised Money and Exited

John Stewart and his co-founder built MapAnything from Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia. When we spoke in 2018, he had raised over $40 million in funding, proving that you can build sizable VC-funded SaaS businesses from anywhere. MapAnything was sold to Salesforce in May 2019.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? Give us some early story.

John Stewart: I’m from upstate New York. I’m from a middle class background. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. My father was in the construction business. He was an architect. I went to school in New England for Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts and graduated in 1997.

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