Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bongo CEO Josh Kamrath (Part 1)

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

Bongo has turned a ~$1M investment into $6M+ in annual revenue with a compelling growth projection in the next couple of years.

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

Josh Kamrath: I was born in Phoenix, Arizona. I lived there until I was 12. Then my family moved to Colorado, which I consider my home. I grew up there and went to college at Colorado State University where I met my wife Josie. She’s from California. I graduated a year ahead of her.

Best of Bootstrapping: How Passageways CEO Paroon Chadha Bootstrapped from Indiana

Paroon has bootstrapped Passageways from Indiana and wants to help other Indiana entrepreneurs succeed.

Along the way, he has pivoted from licensed software to cloud software, and made other strategic decisions that helped his company become more successful.

Read on to learn more on his moves.

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Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Company: Modded Euros CEO Sean Dawes (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you now? How far along? What’s the revenue level?

Sean Dawes: We’re doing millions in revenue. It’s about focusing on capturing as much market share as possible. There are still a handful competitors that are larger than us. For us, it’s growing as fast as possible while focusing on profitability.

My motivation is that I want to enjoy what I do, but I also want to ensure that my family’s future is taken care of. That’s what wakes me up every day. My father and grandfather worked all their lives.

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Company: Modded Euros CEO Sean Dawes (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What about inventory financing? Did you finance it all out of revenue or did you do some sort of bank financing?

Sean Dawes: We did a combination of self-financing and bank financing.

Sramana Mitra: Could you give us a range of what level of bank financing you used to leverage the company?

Best of Bootstrapping: How The Intern Group CEO David Lloyd Bootstrapped to $13 Million

I am very bullish about market opportunities that are large enough to build sizable businesses but not large enough such that VCs end up funding numerous competing companies. This case study shows you how a niche player with a $150 million TAM is growing nicely without outside financing.

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?

David Lloyd: I’m from the UK. I was born in London. I spent the first 22 years of my life in London before spending approximately the last 10 years of my life between London and Latin America.

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Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Company: Modded Euros CEO Sean Dawes (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What are the key inflection points? What strategic moves have you made that led to this?

Sean Dawes: For us, it was being able to offer similar content generation that we were used to working with when we worked in-house. We launched our own content video series where we’d purchase vehicles and show the customer what they could do to the vehicle.

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Company: Modded Euros CEO Sean Dawes (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The transition from dropship to inventory, how far did you get to dropshipping in terms of gross merchandise volume?

Sean Dawes: We did over a million in annual sales before we had to inventory anything.

Sramana Mitra: That’s terrific. What did you learn about the customer base? Were they auto shops or were they consumers?

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Company: Modded Euros CEO Sean Dawes (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you do the marketing services before you were able to switch full-time to the online retail car purchasing?

Sean Dawes: About two years. We spent some time investigating markets because we weren’t sure if we were going to go in the automotive market. We were exploring a lot of different verticals. We looked at everything from baby stores and sporting goods.

We started with things that were of interest to us. I’ve played hockey for the longest time. I had interest there. We said to ourselves, “If our background is automotive, we would be foolish not to enter the automotive market, especially if we needed to go down the route of investment capital.”