Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Just one little piece of information, did the previous company where you were head of sales exit?

Feris Rifai: Yes, it was a sale to another company.

Sramana Mitra: Was it a good exit? Did you make money off that company?

Feris Rifai: Yes, it wasn’t just through the exit. I had done pretty well. Prior to the exit, we did a private equity infusion into the company. Parts of that was the management founding team.

Sramana Mitra: You had a successful exit in a company that you had joined and rose through the ranks. Then you tried to do a dot-com that was, timing-wise, not a very good time. Then you joined another company and that’s where you and Ryan met. While we are there, why don’t we stop and get a bit of Ryan’s history. Ryan, what’s your background? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 1)

Feris and Ryan wanted to work together on a new venture. They first built a services company, then introduced an OEM product, and eventually bootstrapped a product under their own brand. The company has recently raised its first venture money after many years of being in business as a profitable, growing entity.

Sramana Mitra: One of you should probably get started. I want to go back to the very beginning of your journey, and learn about your pre-Bay Dynamics story. Where were you born, raised and, in what kind of background?

Feris Rifai: I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. That’s where I was raised till I was 18 years old. I then came to the United States to go to college. I went to school at Indiana University. It was a great experience for me. Throughout my journey when I was much younger in Lebanon, it was a bit of a difficult upbringing because we couldn’t find a way to get safety to be a part of our lives. I think it’s taught me a lot. It has helped me be, believe it or not, very optimistic. >>>

Is It Normal To Start Your Own Business While Working Full-time?

Yes. Good choice. Keep going.

Bootstrapping with a paycheck is a mode of entrepreneurship that has become a major trend. Entrepreneurs are starting companies in droves while still holding onto their full-time jobs.

Two interviewers, Amina Elahi from the Chicago Tribune and Katherine Harvey from Union Tribune San Diego, recently asked me the same question: If you are bootstrapping a startup with a paycheck, when is the right time to quit?
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Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to a bit more of a chronological story. I understand the philosophy of how you built the company. It’s very interesting what you can do today in terms of really doing these kinds of testing on all marketing exercises at a very dramatic level. Today’s world allows you to do things that it didn’t allow earlier on. It’s really extremely effective if you have the mental bent to be able to do it in a rigorous scientific mathematically-oriented way. Talk about some of the strategic things that you did in the course of 2007. What were the inflection points? I get it that you were growing at 100%. What were some of the strategic moves?

Andrew Filev: A lot of it comes down to the product. Over the years, we had completely rewritten the product. We didn’t put the business on hold for a year. It was more of a gradual rewrite. I think, right now, every single piece of code that we have has probably been rewritten. Over the years, we’ve always interacted very closely with customers and got their feedback both at mass and individual levels. We wanted to understand how they run their businesses, what challenges they’re seeing, and how we can be helpful for them to resolve those challenges. Doing that continuously over the years, we’ve learned a ton. That got reflected to the product a lot. >>>

Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You have chosen to grow it to a substantial level with profits. What do you want to do with this company? Is it something you’re looking to sell? Do you want to continue running it forever?

Belisario Rosas: Continue it. We run the company like a family business. We want to be one of the best places to work at. We’re very employee-friendly. We should be applying for those best places to work for, but we don’t want to have a just a plaque. We want to live it. I feel that we live it. Just trying to fill it with more people is not our goal. We want to keep it under control. I would never want to be in a company where I do not know every single one of my employees.

Sramana Mitra: How big is the company now in terms of employee size?

Belisario Rosas: We’re about 100.

Sramana Mitra: Are they all in Montreal? >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I understand that you constantly test and experiment but there must have been some kind of institutional truths that were emerging in terms of your pricing and business model?

Andrew Filev: One of the big things that we found is this switch to packages in the SMB digital space. We tested and we’re like, “Wow! This is great!” Another interesting observation that we learned pretty quickly is to optimize for the right things. One example is credit card trials. Back in those days, most companies required credit card trials. You could remove that, which would absolutely improve their conversion from being visitor. But then people are less committed. Fewer of them convert from trial to paid account.

When you’re testing like that, you have to optimize throughout the conversion. It’s not just the first step. If you’re just looking at the first step, you’re being short-sighted. There’s a similar example that runs much deeper in how the market operates. If you remember online marketing, the whole dot-com bubble burst around their revenue model of advertising, which was CPM model. The big revolution that Google came up with was cost per click. Everybody was excited. >>>

Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you have that tendency of trying to do it all before this change happened?

Belisario Rosas: Very much. I was buying. I was selling. I was doing everything.

Sramana Mitra: You were running a substantial revenue company but you did not have any executive team?

Belisario Rosas: That is correct.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. The next thing that you did was to introduce a layer of executive teams.

Belisario Rosas: That is correct. I was also delegating. Like I said earlier, I was pretty much into micro-managing. I was learning how to make others do it and concentrating on more of a strategic view of where we wanted to take the company and how we wanted to grow. I would say that was the >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the first year that you were actually selling this product? Was it 2007?

Andrew Filev: Yes. If I remember correctly, we launched the product in June 2007. We had a 30-day trial. The first payment came in 30 days later.

Sramana Mitra: At the end of 2007, how many customers did you have? What did you learn about the business model and the pricing model? What was resonating with your customers?

Andrew Filev: I honestly do not remember. We’ve developed 10,000 paying organizations right now and we’re growing exponentially. This last year, we actually did 2.5x. I don’t remember the exact numbers off the hat. >>>