Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 4)

Bruno Lowagie: I asked what we can do to solve this. IBM said, “We have to do it the hard way.” Actuate was a company under the Eclipse umbrella. They entered a research agreement with Gent University. The deliverable was an IP overview.

During 2007, I went to the university to do my job but as soon as I received a report from IBM Canada with some issues, I had to drop everything and fix the issue. Every week, I would get an Excel file with potential issues. For instance, I used some code that was released under a certain license. I was allowed to use it but inside the code, there were some remnants of a project that had started as a close source and was suddenly brought to the open source. But then the source code is set as proprietary to some. We had two conflicting licenses. The lawyers said, “Better be safe than sorry.” >>>

Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was this something that you created on the side? It was your own intellectual property.

Bruno Lowagie: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: This was in 2000?

Bruno Lowagie: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What does that first release mean? Did you give it to the open source?

Bruno Lowagie: I released it initially in LGPL library but then a couple of months later, to be useful in business, people wanted it to be available under the MPL too. It was free as in free beer in 2000 because the LGPL and MPL are rather liberal. I always compare iText with an engine. If >>>

Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Then what happens next?

Bruno Lowagie: I had three different jobs in the first two years of my career because I saw myself as a guru. When I went to a job interview, I said, “I want to be the guru in something.” Obviously, they said, “We don’t need a guru. We need somebody to write the right codes.” I worked for system integrators for two years.

Then there was a university professor who knew me because I had worked earlier for the Flemish government. I had worked on a research and development project to develop state-of-the-art GIS systems. This professor had also worked for the government and knew my work. He recruited me for Gent University between 1998 and 2010 to write codes. I rewrote the complete student administration system. >>>

A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 1)

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

Bhavin Parikh and his now departed co-founder Hansoo Lee have built Magoosh with textbook diligence and great discipline. Along the way, Hansoo died of lung cancer, a tragedy that hangs over the company both as misfortune and as inspiration. Read this wonderful story of young Berkeley students pulling together a great business and executing with straight up common sense.

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

Bhavin Parikh: I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My parents are from India. They’re both physicians. At some point, I thought about becoming a doctor but during an internship, I fainted. So I knew that path wasn’t for me. I went to Duke University for undergrad and pursued degrees in Economics and Computer Science. Then, I moved to Philadelphia where I worked for Deloitte in technology consulting, right at the intersection of business and technology. It allowed me to utilize both of my degrees and work with people. >>>

Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 1)

Bruno has bootstrapped a highly profitable company from Belgium. Now what?

Sramana Mitra: Where are you from?

Bruno Lowagie: I’m from Belgium.

Sramana Mitra: I’m married to a Belgian. Were you born and raised in Belgium?

Bruno Lowagie: Yes, I was born in Ypres, which is in the west of Flanders. I lived there until I was 18. I went to college in Gent. I met Ingeborg there.

Sramana Mitra: You’re co-founders?

Bruno Lowagie: Yes. We married there. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services From Colorado: InteliSecure CTO Chuck Bloomquist (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is your plan going forward? You’re about $16 million. The market has appetite for what you bring to the table. Is it just basically doing more of the same thing? Is that an accurate summary of what your game plan is?

Chuck Bloomquist: I definitely want to continue and expand in different directions. As you can imagine, the people who want the data continue to get creative with how they are going to get it. Today we see most organizations trying to present this in a retroactive space. If you think about malware and antivirus, it’s all based on signature definition today. Somebody writes an exploit and exploits somebody’s network. They call Symantec and say, “We’ll create a signature for it.” In our opinion, that’s too late. If you can define what it is that’s relevant to the organization, you now have a tool that you can use to look for it. Where are we going next? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services From Colorado: InteliSecure CTO Chuck Bloomquist (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’m asking a very specific question. Maybe I should ask you a broader question. Is this still a services company or is this a product company now?

Chuck Bloomquist: We are a services company. Products that we sell are developed by a variety of different organizations – Symantec, RSA, and Cisco. They have these tools. What we do is we build processes and people around these products so that organizations can see how data is moving and control how the data moves through the organization.

Sramana Mitra: How big a company are you today?

Chuck Bloomquist: We are a $16 million company with about 100 employees. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services From Colorado: InteliSecure CTO Chuck Bloomquist (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In that process, was there any other kind of segmentation? Were there any particular styles of CIOs or IT organizations that were resonating with you? Maybe a vertical or any kind and size of business?

Chuck Bloomquist: Absolutely. There were certain verticals that were more responsive than others. The first one that we found were the banking and finance. They were the early adopters of this type of technology. Rapidly, we saw the medical space start to pick this up as well. It transitioned into the insurance. Now, there are a lot of manufacturers whether it’s in the medical space or parts manufacturing. They are rapidly advancing into content analytics and the idea of protecting critical assets.

Sramana Mitra: How much were you able to gather in terms of these service contracts to get the ball rolling? >>>