Best of Bootstrapping: Founder Bootstrapped a Big Data Company Using Services

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

We maintain that one of the best ways to identify complex problems worth solving inside enterprises is by offering services to them, thereby gaining exposure to the domain. DataSong is yet another case in point. After I spoke with Founder John Wallace, DataSong was acquired by MarketShare in 2015.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning. Where are you from? What kind of a backstory leads up to the entrepreneurial story?

John Wallace: I grew up in the South from a pretty modest background.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Avelead Using Services from Atlanta

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

As usual, we love Bootstrapping Using Services case studies. Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh shares his journey.

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

Jawad Shaikh: I was born in Pakistan. I came to the United States when I was four years old. I lived here in the States my entire life. My story falls under the Entrepreneur Journeys because my family is a business family. My father had his own business. I used to work with him. My story starts there.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Seed Stages with Amir Banifatemi of K5 Ventures

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Amir Banifatemi.

Amir Banifatemi is the Founder and Managing Partner of K5 Ventures, a fund focused on pre-seed, seed, post-seed, and early-stage investments from Southern California. Amir is also a Board Member and former President of Tech Coast Angels, a group of 340 angel investors from Southern California. You can listen to the podcast interview here.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about K5 as well as your seed investing activities at Tech Coast Angels.

Amir Banifatemi: With pleasure. K5 Ventures is an early-stage venture firm. We call it venture capital, because it’s the easiest way to qualify it but, in fact, we are extremely hands-on investors. There are 12 partners and we have operations of different businesses, large companies, successful at exits. We love the opportunity to work with new startups as well. It is our own fund and we are investing with passion in entrepreneurs, and we are working with them on a continuous basis.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to hit $1 million ARR with this product?

Jawad Shaikh: At the end of 2019, we were roughly at $500,000 ARR. Twelve months later, we were at $4.9 million ARR. We spent a lot and invested a lot in a period of three years to perfect this. We also changed our pricing model at the end of 2019. 2020 has been a blow-up year as you can see. There was a 900% growth from an ARR perspective. 

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Digital Startup with a Paycheck

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

We’ve seen a clear trend towards bootstrapping digital startups while holding onto a full-time job for years. When we spoke in 2014, DefinitiveDeals Founder Mattias Larson had a simple but powerful story to tell. Soon after we spoke, DefinitiveDeals.com was acquired by Quotient.

Sramana Mitra: Mattias, tell us about you. Where did your journey begin and in what kind of background?

Mattias Larson: I was born in the northern part of Sweden – actually, not that far away from the Arctic Circle – in a small town with a population of maybe 40,000. I grew up there and I went to college in a nearby town. I graduated with a master’s degree in Computer Science and International Marketing.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you started to identify the opportunity for productization, it was still just the two of you? Were there other people involved?

Jawad Shaikh: No, we started hiring people much early on. I used to say that in my first business, it took us ten years to get to 30 employees. In Avelead, we reached 20 employees in less than three years. 

Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing E-commerce Startup Trends with Daniel Gulati, Forecast Fund

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

Excellent discussion with Daniel Gulati, Founding Partner at Forecast Fund, on the e-commerce startup trends and what can and cannot be venture financed at this stage, and why. When we spoke in 2017, he was Managing Director at Comcast Ventures. You can listen to the podcast interview here.  

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself.

Daniel Gulati: I’m based here in San Francisco and focus 100% of my time on seed and early stage investments in consumer internet companies. About half of my work is in e-commerce and marketplaces. The other half is everything else within consumer Internet – digital media, social media, mobile. Prior to joining Comcast Ventures, I was actually on the operating side.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a little bit more about what the product is? What was the process of identifying this product that you wanted to build?

Jawad Shaikh: This was during the Obama years and the stimulus package of helping healthcare systems move to electronic medical records. Our job was always to help hospitals implement those systems. We migrate data and get electronic as much as possible. There were a lot of challenges with that.