Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Unique Vintage Using a Paycheck

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

Founder CEO Katie Echeverry had a pharmaceutical sales job that she used to bootstrap with a paycheck for 5 years, before quitting to go full-time with her business, Unique Vintage.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Tell us where you’re from. Where did you grow up? Where were you born and raised?

Katie Echeverry: I was born in Burbank, California. I still reside in Burbank, California. I went to school and got my Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, but I ended up in sales. When I was about 26 years old, I ended up being a pharmaceutical sales rep, which I enjoyed. What I liked about sales is the harder I worked, the more money I made. I was a natural entrepreneur, but I just didn’t know the word for it. I worked really hard but that wasn’t enough for me.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 1)

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.

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?

Best of Bootstrapping: Get Real Health Founder Bootstrapped Using Services

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

Robin Wiener, President and Founding Partner at Get Real Health, has built an excellent company with large, international clients in the healthcare domain and has used the bootstrapping using services technique that we espouse in 1Mby1M.

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

Robin Wiener: I’m from Connecticut. I was born in Bristol, the home of ESPN. I went to the University of Connecticut for college. Early on, I had a major speech problem. I couldn’t really pronounce things. Along with that, I had a major learning disability. I had two sisters and a brother. The teachers told my parents that I just wasn’t as smart as my brothers and sisters. Maybe I could get married and that would be a good thing for me to do.

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Best of Bootstrapping: The Importance of Building Value with Shomit Ghose, Onset Ventures

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

Shomit Ghose, Partner at Onset Ventures, is also a veteran startup executive with multiple IPOs under his belt. During our conversation in 2018, he highlights the fact that 70,000 ventures received angel funding in 2014, but the number of companies receiving venture funding remains constant year over year at about 1,000 per year. Focusing on building value is of paramount importance, so that you can validate and prove your value proposition. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the roundtable recording here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Duda Co-founders Bootstrap with Paychecks

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

Itai Sadan is the Co-founder and CEO of Duda, a company that turns desktop websites into mobile sites. When we spoke in 2013, Itai had over 10 years of experience in business development, partner management, program management, and development. Prior to founding Duda (formerly DudaMobile), Itai was a director at SAP, where he managed the SAP Discovery System program and was in charge of relationships with IBM, HP, and Fujitsu.

Sramana: Itai, let’s start with the beginning of your personal journey. What is the story that paved the way for your entrepreneurial journey?

Itai Sadan: I was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. I did have a six-year stint in South Africa, where our family lived for a while. I went to high school in Tel Aviv and met the person who is the co-founder and CTO of DudaMobile during my high school years. After high school I went to the army and served in the anti-terrorist school. After I completed my three-year army service, I traveled the world a little bit.

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Best of Bootstrapping: ADDA Co-founder CEO Bootstrapped with a Paycheck in India

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

Sangeeta (San) Banerjee is the Co-founder and CEO of ADDA, formerly ApartmentADDA.com, an Indian web application company. She holds a degree in electrical engineering from Guindy and earned her master’s from Louisiana State University. Prior to founding ApartmentADDA, she worked for Tata Consultancy Services from 1999 to 2003 and then went on to postgraduate education. After graduating from Louisiana State University she worked for Capgemini in Chicago for a year before returning to India to work for SAP India.

Sramana Mitra: Sangeeta, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from, and what were the circumstances of your childhood?

San Banerjee: I am from Kolkata. I grew up in a very conservative environment. Where I was from, girls were not supposed to ride a bicycle. I went to school on the other end of the city, and I commuted to school by myself. I would ride a bicycle to a ferry, then once on the other side of the river I would take a bus to school. Many people felt that my parents were careless with their daughter’s safety, but my parents really wanted me to be self-sufficient. They wanted me to know how to take care of myself. My belief that I can do anything I want to stems from my parents. I used to face a lot of ridicule for riding a bicycle. They would tell me to stay off the road and tell me to keep my cycle on the playground.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Looking at Terms with Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures

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

Heidi Roizen, Partner at Threshold Ventures, discusses her important article, “How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing,” and imparts crucial lessons to entrepreneurs on how to look at terms in a venture financing situation.

Sramana Mitra: We have been living in world of unicorn mania. We have tried to put some perspective on this issue. There are good sides to the unicorn mania. There are bad sides to the unicorn mania. Let’s start with one particular piece that you wrote, which I thought was very well-analyzed. The piece was titled How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing.

Heidi Roizen: I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve seen cycles come and go. There are two things every entrepreneur should be aware of that they really aren’t aware of. One is, not everything goes well all the time. If you’re an entrepreneur, you fully believe that everything is going to go great for you. The reality is, that is almost never the case. The second thing is, our economy moves in cycles. The macroeconomic conditions will affect your ability to raise money and prosper.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Saatva Co-founder Bootstrapped a $25M E-Commerce Company

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

I have spoken with many VCs who are looking for e-commerce companies that can scale at venture pace, which is hard to achieve. On the other side of the spectrum, however, the bootstrapped e-commerce companies are going gangbusters! Co-founder Ricky Joshi’s Saatva is one such and a terrific company.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your personal back story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?

Ricky Joshi: I was born in Columbus, Ohio. I went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. I was very involved in the entrepreneurial scene there. I actually helped start the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, which is now the flagship entrepreneurial program at Dartmouth. I started my first company at school. I ended up working at a place called IPG, which had 44,000 employees. We were tasked with visual innovation. The first thing I actually did was lead Series C investment round in Facebook. That was a deal I sourced and led. It was a Series C round with $500 million valuation. Obviously, that worked out well. I was able to do a lot of things there.

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