Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Strategy-wise, it’s still large accounts selling and just bigger deals? No major change on that front?

John Baker: Not at that stage. We’re just accelerating that work and putting in place the infrastructure to grow faster. We did another round a couple of years later for another $80 million.

Bootstrapping to $10 Million: Coalition Technologies Co-Founder Jordan Brannon (Part 1)

Coalition is still largely a services company but also has a few products. It’s a well-managed journey.

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?

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about a bit of metrics so we can pin the journey all the way to bootstrapping before you got a funded company model. How far did you get from a revenue point of view, customer metrics, employee metrics? What were the vital statistics?

John Baker: We’re somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 500 people when we raised the largest Series A at that time in Canadian history. It was for $85 million. That was back in 2012.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that we should discuss about that bootstrapping period before we switch into the next inflection point?

John Baker: One thing I would like to discuss is how we differentiated from the competition. In my case, I spent a lot of time on the engineering and design side.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The sales model at this point is still direct selling?

John Baker: Yes, still the same. It had expanded into going to conferences to figure out who to talk to. Now we were talking to Deans or Provosts. 

Sramana Mitra: How was the average deal size moving?

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In the very beginning, when you were going door to door asking people to sign up, what were you charging?

John Baker: In the early days, I built a model that was based on cost per student. The faculty members that I reached out to didn’t have the budget for this. I said, “Don’t pay me. I will charge the students just like they would pay for a textbook in the bookstore.”

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 1)

This is a terrific story of bootstrapped entrepreneurship in EdTech. The company also has a great PaaS strategy.

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

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Using Services from Sweden

European entrepreneurs often successfully bootstrap using services. The chasing investors from the get go disease is less prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic, although the virus from Silicon Valley has been traveling now to all corners of the world. Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo share their journey, having crossed $7 million in annual revenue with minimum outside financing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. It sounds like, Tobi, you’re the founder. Maybe, we’ll start with you and let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Tobi Andersson: I was born in Sweden, in the Swedish countryside. Very early on in my life, I decided that one day I would like to earn the money to have the opportunity to buy a really big farm. That has always been my vision – to create something that, on one hand, can give me money but on the other hand, I can create opportunities for people to develop. I’m very much like HR focused on life. I would like everyone an opportunity to feel that they have a good life.

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