Best of Bootstrapping: Co-founders Bootstrapped Ateb Using Services from North Carolina

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

Ateb CEO Frank Sheppard and his co-founders had built a sizeable bootstrapped business in North Carolina when we spoke in 2015. Read on to learn what worked for Ateb and what you can learn from them. Ateb was acquired by Omnicell in 2017.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your story. Where do you come from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances?

Frank Sheppard: I was born in Florida but I was raised in Atlanta in a typical middle-class suburban environment.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you do your schooling?

Frank Sheppard: I went to Georgia Tech for college. I just went through the public school system in all of my education prior to Georgia Tech.

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Are You Bootstrapping a Product Using Services?

At 1Mby1M, we’re big fans of bootstrapping products using services. If you have good services customers, you may be in a great spot to build a higher growth product business leveraging that foundation.

The One Million by One Million (1Mby1M) virtual accelerator offers a core methodology for doing this.

Interested? Apply to win a one-year scholarship to the 1Mby1M Premium program, sponsored by DataStax, valued at $1000. Check out The DataStax – 1Mby1M Startup Challenge.

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Putting the Freshworks IPO in Context (Part 2)

Freshworks’ Financials

Within two years of its launch, Freshdesk joined the 1Mby1M Million Dollar Club. Revenues were estimated to have grown to a $10 million annual run rate by the end of 2013. In December 2011, the company raised its first Series A funding for $1 million, $5 million in 2012, and $31 million in 2014. So far, the company has raised $484 million in over nine rounds and has acquired 13 capital-efficient startups, several of which were funded by Girish as an angel investor.

Best of Bootstrapping: Reltio Founder Bootstrapped Using Services

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

Here’s yet another case in point in our Bootstrapping Using Services series. Founder Manish Sood was scaling Reltio super fast when we spoke in 2015, and had raised venture capital, consistent with our theme Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later.

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?

Manish Sood: I was born in the northern part of India. I grew up and went to school there. I went to an engineering college in the southern part of India, which was a new experience for me from a location perspective and getting acclimatized to the overall culture and environment.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping eMazzanti Technologies Using Services

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

When we spoke in 2015, CEO Carl Mazzanti has bootstrapped eMazzanti using services to close to $10 million, maintaining a 20% year-over-year growth rate.

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

Carl Mazzanti: I was born in Pennsylvania. I come from a military family. A joke that I used as a kid was, “My parents moved around a lot, but I always found them.” Because of that, me and my brother are more outgoing than the rest.

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12 Udemy Courses on How to Come Up With New Tech Startup Business Ideas

You want to do a startup. So, you need an idea to build around. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumer behavior in a major way. As we move through the virus-era, much more will likely change. With this realization, we ran a poll asking which topics readers would like me to cover and discuss. The overwhelming winner was startup ideas. So, after much thought, here are eight of my most recent startup ideas. My hope is to stimulate and help my fellow entrepreneurs catalyze these ideas into profitable businesses.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping LittleThings First, Raising Money Later

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

Joe Speiser, Founder & CEO of LittleThings bootstrapped his first digital media/ad network business to $50 million in revenue and then sold it to private equity. Later he started a second business, an e-commerce company, that he bootstrapped for a year and then raised venture capital. His third business, LittleThings, is a spin-off within the second business that took him back to his digital media roots. Since our conversation in 2015, LittleThings was acquired by RockYou Media, an entertainment and media company aimed at millennials, in 2018.

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?

Joe Speiser: I’m from New York and I went to school in the city. I studied at the Columbia University. I’ve been doing all sorts of businesses from a very young age. I always had a passion for trying to start something from scratch and make a living. My dad is an entrepreneur. I used to work in his warehouse for most of my summers. It definitely taught me a lot watching my dad run a business. I don’t know if it’s something that’s taught or something that you’re just genetically predisposed to. I enjoy it so much.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Ensighten Founder Bootstrapped First, Raised Money Later

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

Ensighten Founder Josh Manion is a fellow MIT alum, and a fellow believer in the tried and true methodology, Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later. Josh raised his Series A with $5M in revenue. When we spoke in 2015, the company was growing at 150% year-over-year. Wonderful story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your story. Where are you from?

Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Josh Manion: I grew up in a little town in Wisconsin called Jamesville, which had about 50,000 people. My dad delivered little snack cakes to grocery stores and stocked the shelves with them. My mom ran a store. It was a Midwest upbringing. The unique element for me was that I was actually homeschooled all the way through high school. That afforded me some unique latitude to pursue some of the things that I’m passionate about. One of which is chess, which I took to some extreme. I actually played as a professional chess player for a couple of years before going to college. I have one sister three years older than me.

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