Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping to $8M During the Covid Crisis

Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani shares his superb story of COVID-era entrepreneurship. Uplifting and thrilling!

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?

Ammar Amdani: I was born in Miami. I spent half of my life here in the US before moving to Dubai where I spent most of my teenage years. After that, I went to school in New York at NYU. I graduated a year ago and began a role in venture capital. That’s my professional background.

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Bootstrapping with Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2019? How much did you do?

Jake Weaver: That was the $5 million year. That was the breakout from where we had been before. For anybody that talks about valuations, a professional services firm is not valued as a product company. Even though revenue was staying the same, the value was increasing.

Bootstrapping with Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Just so you know, we have a whole methodology in our program around Bootstrapping Using Services. It’s something that we do a lot of in the program.

It’s something we have numerous case studies on. We have encountered what you’re talking about several times before. It works. I think you will go on to tell us that it will work.

Bootstrapping with Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the productization? What was the revenue level as a services company before you started productization?

Jake Weaver: As a services company, we had just over $4 million in revenue when the change started to happen. We had stepped into the product market, but we had made a smaller business solution.

Bootstrapping with Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The projects you were doing were basically SharePoint implementation projects?

Jake Weaver: Yes. Ten years ago, SharePoint was being used for a lot of stuff. People would build intranet networks on it. They would also build business process solutions on it. They would even build extranets with a public-facing side.

Best of Bootstrapping: MiQ CEO Bootstraps with Services from London

Gurman Hundal, Co-founder and CEO of MiQ, has bootstrapped a fast growth company using services. Read about his impressive 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?

Gurman Hundal: I was born in England in a town about 30 miles from London. My family is from the northern state of Punjab in India. Even though I was born in England, I couldn’t speak English till I was about six years old. I have a British-Indian upbringing. My parents owned their own shoe shop in a shopping mall near where we live. I got an early exposure to family-run organizations. I went through the educational system within England. I went to University of Kingston where I studied Business. It was there where I started my career.

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Bootstrapping with Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 1)

We continue our coverage of bootstrapping using services.

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?

Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How big were they?

Diego Gomes: They were around $10 million a year.

Sramana Mitra: What level were you at last year?

Diego Gomes: Around $12 million.