Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When did you start the Gusto partnership?

Ashik Ahmed: That was between late 2013 and early 2014.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you do in 2014? How would you attribute that to Xero, Gusto, and your direct selling efforts?

Ashik Ahmed: The challenge with partnerships is that, at the start, you get a very good escalator. But then you reach an altitude where you can’t go any higher because you’ve have milked every customer from that partnership. At that stage, we were definitely >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: From a customer acquisition point of view, how did you go to market?

Ashik Ahmed: It was really, really hard. We spoke to a lot of customers. In the second round where we went for anyone can just sign up, you don’t need to get the word out. Back then, I don’t think we even understood the M of marketing. One of the other things we realized is that we do quite a lot of time and attendance but we don’t do payroll.

There was this company called Xero which was growing very fast in Australia. They do accounting and payroll. We built and did integration. Most of our customers used to say that it took them a day or two to do payroll. We took it down to one minute. You just >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you fire the CEO that you brought on?

Ashik Ahmed: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How did that go?

Ashik Ahmed: Not pretty. I doubted myself whether I would be capable of being the CEO of this company. I didn’t even know what the job description of a CEO looked like back then. My lesson out of that is, although I had to fire him, I had failed in hiring the right person. If I want something, I have to go get it. I can’t rely on somebody else to make that happen for me. >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: From a vertical point of view, it was all in the hospitality area?

Ashik Ahmed: That’s correct – all restaurants, bars, and hotels. That was the industry we were focusing on.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers are we talking?

Ashik Ahmed: By the end of 2013, I believe we only had 150.

Sramana Mitra: These are small businesses? You were working with small businesses? >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This is an Entrepreneur Journeys story. I’m going to help you tell that story as a journey. You started with this concept back in 2008 with your co-founder. What was the first thing that you did?

Ashik Ahmed: Coming up with the name. To be honest, I resigned from Aero-Care in February 2007 because I believed I’d achieved what I wanted to achieve. I actually wanted to go and work for Apple or Google where I could get some industry experience. But Steve came up with the idea of taking it to the world.  >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 1)

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

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later is the 1M/1M mantra. Ashik Ahmed tells his story of bootstrapping to $10 Million before raising $25 Million in the first external financing.

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

Ashik Ahmed: I was born in Bangladesh. In 1997, my whole family migrated to Melbourne in Australia. I did my high school education as well as university in Melbourne. Then we moved to Sydney where I started working for my co-founder. My co-founder >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Have you started seeing revenues escalate from that yet?

Vaclav Muchna: In the United States, this year we are going to be close to $3 million. Our business has a very long sales cycle. We expect that the bigger revenue growth is going to happen next year.

Sramana Mitra: You said you did $30 million in 2016, right?

Vaclav Muchna: Our fiscal year is from July to June. In the fiscal year that ended in June 2016, revenue was $30 million.

Sramana Mitra: This is all business that you’ve built organically. There is no outside funding?

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Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You have a tremendous revenue stream. Where are you now? How far along are you?

Nilay Banker: We are getting into the tens of millions of dollars. We are doubling every year in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: How many people?

Nilay Banker: Now, we are close to 50 people. Almost everybody is in the US. We are focusing on international expansion. Right now, most of our customers have their headquarters in the US. We are focusing on expansion to Europe and then Asia-Pacific, as well as Australia and New Zealand. >>>