Bootstrapping Lessons: FairWarning CEO Kurt Long (Part 1)

Kurt has tried different permutations and combinations of bootstrapping, several of them successfully. Listen to his perspective on each of those.

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

Kurt Long: I was raised in Clearwater, Florida. I grew up in Florida at a very special time where we enjoyed being outside and in the waters. As I grew up, I watched the Apollo missions and other NASA-based missions take off from the Kennedy Space Center, which is on the other coast but you could still see the launches. From a very early age, those made an impression on me that I wanted to participate in innovation and exploration. That’s something that has stayed with me through my whole career. As I went through high school and college, I held on to the dream and even wrote letters to Kennedy Space Center to ask about the Space Center and how it worked. >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How has your revenue ramped from the 2007 time frame to 2015? Where are you now?

Chris Grandi: We’re growing over 50% per year. In year one, we started our revenue with less than a million dollars. You grow a 100% when your revenue is smaller. Our revenue is significantly bigger now but we’re still growing at more than 50%.  I actually don’t think that we can grow this company at greater than 50% because of the service levels that we have to provide. I will be very pleased if we continue to grow at 50%.

Sramana Mitra: You’re still doing it as a self-financed business? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You seem to be enjoying the process of starting something, figuring a niche, and getting it to a certain amount of revenue. The first one you scaled to $50 million in revenue, which was a substantial amount of revenue. It sounds like you like to figure it out and then sell the company. Is that accurate?

Todd Dunlop: That definitely has been my MO to this point. That challenge of the problem solving is something I enjoy and excel at. Ultimately, the real fun for me is cracking the business model.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. Presumably you’re going to sell this one not too far from now because you’ve already figured out the business model. >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is it about the hedge fund space in terms of work flows or virtualization? What specifically is different in that space versus other verticals?

Chris Grandi: There are really two things that make the hedge fund space different. One is the level of service. Because of what hedge fund managers do and how active they trade, everything has to work all the time. We all know that in technology, that’s not necessarily feasible, but the service level demand of giving them the best technology and the best service around that technology is higher than in any other industry I’ve ever been a part of. Correspondingly, because they’re hedge funds, their economic model is great. Their willingness to pay is higher. From the standpoint of just service levels, it’s very unique to hedge funds. If trading systems go down for 20 seconds, they could lose millions of dollars. You really have to prioritize building not only enterprise class technology, but also the various other redundancies. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much did you sell it for?

Todd Dunlop: Unfortunately, I can’t disclose that.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve made a substantial amount of money in that exit so that whatever you then chose to do next, you had capital available?

Todd Dunlop: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: What was the next venture?

Todd Dunlop: From there, I created a company called BetaStreet. The idea behind BetaStreet is I use it to either invest in or start a unique company. My philosophy that took me a while to get to is, if there’s something that I’m interested in, then that’s a great opportunity for me to invest. If it’s something that I’m passionate about, then that’s an opportunity for me to be a partner or to be involved in. >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was going to be the new company? What did you find that warrants doing another company?

Chris Grandi: This is one thing that I always tell the entrepreneurs I speak to. You always hear about entrepreneurs who start a company when they’re super young and don’t have a lot of experience, and they’re successful. That happens but ultimately, I’ve always believed that if you do something long enough, you get smart in it and get domain experience. Your risk of success is much greater.

I saw a better technical solution to the previous company. I believed that the company who does this 10 years from now is going to be bigger than any of the companies in the space. >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

Chris Grandi: 2001. At the end of 2001, I was essentially committed to taking off six months to figure out what I was going to do about starting my next company. Despite not making money in that first entrepreneurial endeavor, I was committed to starting my own company. As I started that process, I connected with this IT services company based out of Boston with a business model that focuses on providing IT services to hedge funds. They had a West Coast operation that was not very big. They hired me as a consultant to step in and take a look and figure out how to make it better. I spent three months doing that and realized that I liked it. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s take that story chronologically. You started that in 2004?

Todd Dunlop: Yes. We always talked about how we got started. It was sort of bootstrapping.

Sramana Mitra: You said AdWords was just coming on. You essentially helped companies understand AdWords and market through AdWords. That’s what you were doing?

Todd Dunlop: We were essentially arbitraging it where we would say, “If you pay us $10 per lead, we’ll go out there and drive the traffic.” We started as performance-based search marketers and grew the company. That’s how we discovered early on how we were going to finance this company. >>>