Bootstrapping a $25 Million E-Commerce Company: Saatva Co-Founder Ricky Joshi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. Tell me more about the business itself. First and foremost, who were the people involved when you got this off the ground? You mentioned your co-founder. Where did he come from? How did you meet him? Where do you know him from?

Ricky Joshi: There are basically three co-founders of the company—myself, Kris, and Ron. I actually hired Kris at Craigslist. We also had a startup that we were incubating. I just knew that Kris and I would be working together. Kris is one of the smartest and most disciplined persons I’ve ever been around. It’s interesting because oftentimes, you have these people who are famous and have these brand names. Kris definitely has that spark.

Sramana Mitra: What is his background?

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Bootstrapping a $25 Million E-Commerce Company: Saatva Co-Founder Ricky Joshi (Part 1)

I have spoken with many VCs who are looking or e-commerce companies that can scale at venture pace, which is hard to achieve. On the other side of the spectrum, however, the bootstrapped e-commerce companies are going gangbusters! Saatva is one such and a terrific company.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your personal back story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?

Ricky Joshi: I was born in Columbus, Ohio. I went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. I was very involved in the entrepreneurial scene there. I actually helped start the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, which is now the flagship entrepreneurial program at Dartmouth. I started my first company at school. >>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Canada: Jory Lamb, CEO of VistaVu (Part 7)

Jory Lamb: In the middle of 2007, I moved to Denver to get things off the ground in the US market. In the early years in Houston, the company was a bit of a revolving door. It was really hard to retain the staff. Again, I made another error, for which I’m smarter today. I kept hiring staff, sticking them in the office and trying to manage from a distance. We had our clients and staff but every six months, we were changing at least one or two people. I couldn’t get them to stick.

The recession in 2009 was hard. But we got really close to our existing clients. We did all sorts of project work for them. We made sure that we didn’t take on any new expenditure. Especially having faced bankruptcy once, my management is probably more conservative. In 2010, I made one of the most significant hires I’ve made in my career. We hired Roy Garcia who’s the VP – Sales out of Oildex to head up sales for our company. >>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Canada: Jory Lamb, CEO of VistaVu (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Right now, we don’t have any visibility into how you built the business. I understand that you opened offices here and there, but I need mechanics of how you built the business. You built your product on top of SAP. Was SAP helping you generate leads in the oil and gas industry or were you generating the leads? What was the sales and pricing strategy? What was the competitive landscape?

Jory Lamb: When we first entered the market in Canada, we did a series of toolbox practice. We invited people from the industry to come see what our product could do. We had about 80 to 100 attendees. We closed 17 clients in 2006. 17 clients in the early days would be a week-long engagement. When you’re putting in SAP, these engagements can be months. What happened to >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Robin Wiener, CEO of Get Real Health (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What about the team? Tell me a bit about the three best at the Maryland Incubator. How did that all play out?

Robin Wiener: We started out with three people. One of the guys we worked with early on was Raj. He is kind of our fourth partner and a phenomenal one. He moved back to Bangalore where he started our Indian office, which is not the typical Indian office. They’re part of our company. He has built a phenomenal team. We have two offices. We’ve 34 people in India. Here in Maryland, we’ve 33. Then we’ve three people in Texas.

My Vice President came out of our first client, American Heart Association. She really wanted to try something different. She lives in Dallas and wanted to stay in Dallas. If you’re talented, I want you to work on my team, but you don’t have to sit next to me. You can work wherever you want. Then, we also have two people in England. We’re about 71 right now. We went from four or five of us to this. I have the most phenomenal team. They’re just really fantastic.

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Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Canada: Jory Lamb, CEO of VistaVu (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’m with you that you set that up as a separate entity, ran by a full-time manager, and you focused on oil and gas contract software development. That’s where we are, right?

Jory Lamb: We focused on oil and gas commercial software products that would sit on top of SAP. We got out of contract work and we made a decision that we would write commercial software package for the oil and gas industry that managed the day-to-day operations of a field service company.

Sramana Mitra: Where did that idea come from?

Jory Lamb: In 2003, one of the challenges of running this web software company was that we were living from project to project. Some years we’d be written into the budget and some years out of the budget. We made a conscious decision that we would go find a solution because >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Robin Wiener, CEO of Get Real Health (Part 6)

Robin Wiener: US is also starting to think about that a little bit. The other place where we’ve launched is Australia. It’s the same model of telehealth. We’ve partnered with Telstra Health, which is the largest telecommunications company in Australia. We’re rolling out our first application there. A new region that is very interesting is the Middle East. The population is getting sick. They’re very interested in trying to work with their population to keep them healthy. Since we can do the product in Arabic, they’re very interested in what we can do. >>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Canada: Jory Lamb, CEO of VistaVu (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the go-to-market? Was it the same? You identified some influencers, sold to influencers, and then leveraged them to sell to the rest of the market, is that right?

Jory Lamb: It was a little bit different, but we started that way. We went into an area of influencers. We worked with consulting veterinarians. On the heels of that, we bought out a green screen legacy system and assumed their clients as well. In a span of about a year and a half of acquiring our own and then through negotiating and purchasing this legacy system and assuming all their clients, we went from 40 to 280. I spun out that revenue stream off into its own business. >>>