Best of Bootstrapping: Co-founders Bootstrapped to $10M

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

In 2020, Coalition Technologies was still largely a services company, but also had a few products. Co-founder Jordan Brannon shared the company’s well-managed journey.

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?

Jordan Brannon: I was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I grew up primarily in Washington state in a smaller community. It’s about an hour and a half south of Seattle. I have three brothers and we largely stuck to the northwest throughout my childhood.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Is this a B2C business?

Victor Allis: Yes, it’s for voters. The strange thing is, there’s no revenue. There is no business model at the time. All we’re trying to do is to get people to use it to vote. I always believe that if you do something that adds value, there’s always a way to get people to invest in it or pay money. We have a lot of policy questions. People make choices based on it. We can take all these choices and add them up and we could predict that a candidate would win. Our poll was actually closer than most polls.

Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You took money from private equity that gave you some liquidity to the founders and gave you growth capital to move to the next phase.

Victor Allis: Only liquidity to the founders. This is what was happening. I moved to the United States in 2010. We did a bit of press release. Suddenly, everybody was knocking on my door offering us money. I said no. They said, “That’s exactly why we want to give it to you.”

Sramana Mitra: I have a saying that VCs love to come to the rescue of victory.

Best of Bootstrapping: EdTech Unicorn First Bootstrapped from Canada

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

In 2020, D2L CEO John Baker shared this terrific story of bootstrapped entrepreneurship in EdTech.

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?

John Baker: I’m based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I was born in a fishing village on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. When I was 22 years and in my third year of engineering at the University of Waterloo, I started a company with the mission of transforming the way the world learns. 

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Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenue level did you get to?

Victor Allis: Ultimately in 2014, we had $100 million.

Sramana Mitra: What are the inflection points? You remember the milestones really well.

Victor Allis: The first one was in December 2000. The Dutch Railways was looking for a solution. It wasn’t part of my scope. My scope was manufacturing and trucking companies. We had never thought about Railways.

Best of Bootstrapping: What Should Tech Startups Do to Raise Seed Capital in 2022?

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

In general, Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later is the best strategy. You need to be ready to raise money.

If you decide to raise money, I strongly suggest you read the 1Mby1M Seed Capital series of interviews on our blog ASAP. We’ve profiled investor after investor to understand their investment thesis. You need to get in their heads and get a sense of what they’re looking for, especially if you’ve never raised money before.

Remember, Investors are looking to multiply the money that they put into startups.

A bit more sophisticated way to think about it is to ask the question: Multiply by how much? 2X? 3X? 5X? 10X? 20X?

This question determines the strategies of what they’re looking to do:

• Look for Unicorns (build companies with billion dollar market caps): Go from 0 to $100M in revenue in 5–7 years.
• Look for early exits (sell capital efficient startups and make a lower multiple, but nonetheless, have a successful outcome). Bootstrapping to an Exit is a strategy that this kind of investors love. There are ways of playing this game that are somewhat different from the regular Unicorn pursuit scenario.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of companies were these seven companies that you invited? Were they logistics companies?

Victor Allis: One was in the Rotterdam harbor; they unloaded ships. They told us that it’s a unique process and there was no product that could handle that. Then there was another one. It was a copper factory. We said that our product is so flexible that, no matter how crazy your process is, it will fit in our software. That was true. That was the unique thing. We made very flexible software.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services from Sweden

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

European entrepreneurs often bootstrap using services successfully. The chasing of investors from the get go is less prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic, although this obsession from Silicon Valley has traveled to all corners of the world now. Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo shared their journey in 2016, when they had crossed $7 million in annual revenue with minimal outside financing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. It sounds like, Tobi, you’re the founder. Maybe, we’ll start with you and let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Tobi Andersson: I was born in Sweden, in the Swedish countryside. Very early on in my life, I decided that one day I would like to earn the money to have the opportunity to buy a really big farm. That has always been my vision – to create something that, on one hand, can give me money but on the other hand, I can create opportunities for people to develop. I’m very much like HR focused on life. I would like everyone an opportunity to feel that they have a good life.

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