Successful Pivots: Anthony Ferry, CEO of PriceSpider (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The technology you got from Jon was a separate company and not part of Neudesic?

Anthony Ferry: That is currently a separate company. That’s the company that I’m currently the CEO of. It was formed upon the acquisition of that technology. He had built a very ingenious crawling engine for data acquisition across the web, specifically targeted towards retails products being offered for sale on the web.

We brought that in-house and incubated that for a few years. We brought to market a series of reports to manufacturers to help them understand their pricing presence in the marketplace. We produced numerous other types of reports on the data that we >>>

Successful Pivots: Anthony Ferry, CEO of PriceSpider (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was there any specific type of clients that you were getting traction with?

Anthony Ferry: Finance and banking companies were a big one. Hospitality was another big one. We built some pretty elaborate hospitality systems for hotels, gaming, and things of that nature. It was fairly diverse. We were getting a lot of ideas.

Sramana Mitra: At what point did you start working on a product?

Anthony Ferry: We were working for a finance institution and they had a need for a middleware solution to connect to >>>

Successful Pivots: Anthony Ferry, CEO of PriceSpider (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the concept around which you started this company?

Anthony Ferry: When we formed the company, it was a traditional consulting company where we wanted to build solutions for various industries. We also wanted to build software products and have our feet in the fire out there to understand what the needs of the industry were at that time to come up with those ideas. Consulting business was doing very well and growing very fast.

Sramana Mitra: What area were you consulting in? I am gathering that you are telling a story of

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Successful Pivots: Anthony Ferry, CEO of PriceSpider (Part 1)

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

Anthony has navigated PriceSpider with some astute strategic moves. Read on to learn more. Strategic maneuverings of real entrepreneurs, by the way, are great learning opportunities.

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?

Anthony Ferry: I was born in Inglewood,California. I haven’t strayed very far from there. I moved down south a little bit into South Orange County in the mid-70’s all the way through high school. In college, I ventured just a little bit up north to a local >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Can you name some of the locations that you specifically went after in this mode where there was enough technical talent that you were looking for but were also low cost?

Cedric Saverese: There wasn’t a particular location that I was aiming for. I was aiming for US, mostly from a timezone perspective. I wanted to be able to work with people in normal business hours. We did hire people in Europe. Usually it doesn’t work very well. Now we have people in Japan, Philippines, and India, but it’s because they’re working with customers that are in those timezones. Early on, I wanted people to be in my timezone to be able to work with them effectively.

Sramana Mitra: What parts of the United States were you hiring from? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When did you leave Sage?

Mitch Russo: 1998.

Sramana Mitra: Then you came back to Boston. What happens next? >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch to team. You started as a solo entrepreneur?

Cedric Saverese: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you carry on as a solo entrepreneur?

Cedric Saverese: Two to three years, while it was a side project. When I did it full-time, I hired the first person within the next few months.

Sramana Mitra: What was the position that you hired? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 5)

Mitch Russo: As I said, tech support was starting to run very long waits. A woman called and announced that she is the head of the legal technology division for the Los Angeles Bar Association. She was having terrible problems. She said our software crashed her computer and that we better get somebody out there right away. We only sell for $99. I think by that time, it was $199. To fly out and fix somebody’s computer wasn’t economical, but this was an important person.

I made a crazy decision to call another customer in Los Angeles and who I know was a fan of our software. >>>