Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Timeslips to Exit

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

In 2018, Co-founder CEO Mitch Russo shared the story of how he built Timeslips and sold it to Sage for $10.5 million in 1994. Very entertaining as well as instructive.

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

Mitch Russo: I was born in New York. I was raised in a small community called Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. It was there that we basically started a rock band. Using the idea of how to build an entertainment platform as a rock band in high school, I learned a lot about entrepreneurship and I learned a lot about what it takes to make money and how to promote and share content.

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Best of Bootstrapping: The Disbalance Between VC Compensation and the Entrepreneur

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The compensation disbalance in the Venture Capital / Private Equity world remains quite stark. Take a look at the chart a friend once sent me showing some concrete data on VC compensation, and Private Equity industry performance.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Virtual Company with a Paycheck

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

FormAssembly Founder and CEO Cedric Savarese’s story is a textbook case study of the kind of entrepreneur we want to see emerge and grow in every corner of the world: a solo entrepreneur who is a developer and a product guy capable of getting to validation while holding onto a day job. When we spoke in 2019, Cedric had almost 50 employees spread around the world, and while it maintained a small office of fewer than 10 people in Indiana, the bulk of the company had scaled as a virtual workforce. Excellent model, and I encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to read this carefully.

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

Cedric Savarese: I was born in France and expatriated to the US. I grew up in a small town not so far from Paris.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Decisively to $5M+

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RainmakerForce CRO Mack Sundaram had built a successful business optimized for autonomy and profitability when we spoke in 2018. Excellent navigation!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Tell us where you’re from. Where did you grow up? Where were you born and raised?

Mack Sundaram: I was born in South India in a village near Chennai. I spent some time of my childhood in Chennai and Pondicherry. I later went to school in New Delhi. Since then, I moved over to the United States where I had an opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree in Economics. That’s where the transition happened.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Startups Die From Overfunding

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Funding = Success, right? I wish it did. But entrepreneurial tracks are littered with carcasses of dead startups that were very well funded, some to the tune of hundreds of millions. As a case in point, watch this 2 minutes 31 second video: Death By Overfunding.

If you prefer to read instead of watching, read the Nasty Gal story here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Global E-commerce Venture to $50M

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When we spoke in 2018, SmartBuyGlasses Co-CEO David Menning had bootstrapped a global e-commerce venture from Hong Kong to $50M. Splendid execution!

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

David Menning: I grew up in Sydney. I’ve been educated in Australia. In my later years, I studied at universities overseas both in Canada and Japan for a little while. It was this time when I was abroad spending time in different countries that I was exposed to different business models, cultures, and people.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped and Pivoted from the US Midwest

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Co-founder and CEO Paroon Chadha has bootstrapped Passageways from Indiana, now doing business as OnBoard based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he wants to help other regional entrepreneurs succeed. Along the way, he has pivoted from licensed software to cloud software, and made other strategic decisions that helped his company become more successful. Read our conversation from 2018 to learn more on his moves.

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

Paroon Chadha: I was born in Chandigarh, India. I was born to a family of entrepreneurs. Growing up, the choices basically boiled down to being an engineer and then perhaps being an entrepreneur. I went to Punjab Engineering College and found myself a little bit at odds with technical internships that I did and felt like sales was my true calling. It was mostly influenced by some of my mentors in life. My dad ran businesses. It led me to join a sales job out of engineering. My first job was at Wipro. I sourced hardware and software solutions for two years in India. That’s how it started.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Niche Player Bootstrapped to $13M

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I’m very bullish about market opportunities that are large enough to build sizable businesses but not large enough such that VCs end up funding numerous competing companies. This case study – my interview from 2018 with David Lloyd, Co-founder and CEO of The Intern Group – shows you how a niche player with a $150 million TAM is growing nicely without outside financing.

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

David Lloyd: I’m from the UK. I was born in London. I spent the first 22 years of my life in London before spending approximately the last 10 years of my life between London and Latin America.

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