Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Using Services Case Studies

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

As I started analyzing various paths to success via bootstrapping, a second formula also became absolutely obvious: doing services projects and then formulating a product through that process. We gave this a name: Bootstrapping with Services, and published a book on the subject, Bootstrapping Using Services.

Over 99% of entrepreneurs who seek financing get rejected. The seed capital gap leaves many entrepreneurs struggling to get their businesses off the ground. Bootstrapping, a tried-and-true method to self-fund a business, is a must to bridge this gap in seed funding. And offering a service is one of the best ways to bootstrap. When I turn the spotlight on entrepreneurs who have successfully bootstrapped their ventures using services, please note that, in many cases, these same entrepreneurs later raised venture capital. Through my interviews, I aim to give you a seat at the table with successful entrepreneurs and synthesizes what is learned to provide information and inspiration for everyone looking to take their business concepts to the next level.

Below are five case studies on the topic:

• Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom
• Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker
• Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid
• Bootstrapping Using Services: James Kane, CEO of RWS
• Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Niche E-commerce Company to $20M

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

Niche e-commerce still produces compelling success stories. Here is how CEO Brian Lim built iHeartRaves from our conversation in 2018.

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?

Brian Lim: I was raised in LA County. My parents immigrated here to escape communism in China and Cambodia. I grew up very poor. We bootstrapped our company back in 2010 with $100 and turned it into a $20 million a year company.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Some Seed Investors Who Like Bootstrapped Startups

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

I’d like to encourage bootstrapping entrepreneurs to start thinking about certain investors as bootstrapping partners. These investors, typically, LIKE capital efficient businesses.

They do not want to force feed capital into companies, unlike certain larger funds.

Their fund sizes are small, and they are set up to make money off smaller exits. [Re: Bootstrapping to Exit]

Please listen to a few conversations to get a feel for the point of view. There are many more on the Seed Capital series on our blog. You can also listen to the 1Mby1M Podcasts for more.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services from Michigan

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

I am always thrilled to see great entrepreneurship in various parts of the world that are slightly off-center. Well, Algo Founder Amjad Hussain’s journey as shared in 2018 is a great one from Detroit.

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?

Amjad Hussain: I was born in a very small village of Pakistan.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Travel Experiences Business to $5M

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

Under30Experiences Co-founder Matt Wilson has built a fantastic business using content marketing to sell travel experiences to young adults. Very cool! Here is our conversation from 2019.

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

Matt Wilson: I grew up in upstate New York. I grew up in a little tiny town called Stormville, New York. It’s about 60 minutes outside of New York City. It’s not really that close to the city, but it wasn’t extremely rural. I just started being an enterprising young man whether it was by mowing lawns or picking golf balls out of the local ponds. Selling the golf balls on eBay was my first online business. That really ignited the passion for entrepreneurship. Baseball cards would probably be the other thing that I was really passionate about when I was younger.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping from AZ to $10M

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

After putting the spotlight on Entrepreneurship in Arizona, I spoke with Pagely CEO Joshua Strebel. In 2019, he shared another terrific story of bootstrapping success from Arizona.

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

Joshua Strebel: I was born in a little town in Idaho called Soda Springs. I’m the youngest of nine children. I grew up primarily in Las Vegas, Nevada and was splitting time within Salt Lake City, Utah. My parents were divorced when I was younger, so I went back and forth between households. I finished high school in Salt Lake City and ended up in Arizona where I went to college at Northern Arizona University.
Sramana Mitra: When was it that you came out of college?

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Unicorn Startups

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

While it doesn’t happen that often, Bootstrapped Unicorns do exist.

My 2014 Entrepreneur Journeys book, Billion Dollar Unicorns, has a whole section on this topic. You can read an excerpt on my blog titled Bootstrapped Unicorns. In this piece, I discuss three companies, Zoho, eClinicalWorks, and Veeam, that have bootstrapped to about a billion dollars in revenues.

Revenues NOT valuation.

That puts their valuations in the five to ten billion range or beyond. So they are Unicorns (billion dollar valuation) many times over.

You can also read an interview with Sridhar Vembu of Zoho here that describes the early journey of the company: Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Blitzscaling Strategy vs. Bootstrapping

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

You must have read something or the other about Blitzscaling, the hypergrowth phenomenon that Reid Hoffman has been championing:

What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?

The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion – as quickly as possible.

Well, I have a small fact to point out: it probably isn’t an option for you.

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