Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services from Poland to a US SaaS Company

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

Booksy Co-founder and CEO Stefan Batory started a software development company in Poland with a few other partners. Today, he’s running a high-growth, VC-funded SaaS and marketplace business in the US. Awesome journey! Here is our conversation from early 2020, plus you can listen to our podcast interview from 2021 here.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Tell us where you’re from, where you were born, raised, and in what kind of background.

Stefan Batory: I’m from Warsaw, Poland. I was born and raised in one of the poorest parts of the country. I got a scholarship and went to a high school here in the US back in 1994.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped ButcherBox to Significant Scale

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

Before the pandemic in 2018, ButcherBox Founder and CEO Mike Salguero shared a fascinating story of a subscription service for high-quality meat being delivered to consumer homes.

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

Mike Salguero: I was born in Paraguay. I’m the youngest of four kids. My parents divorced when I was six months old, and my mom moved up to western Massachusetts with her four children.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Happily Bootstrapping with Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu

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

Zoho has been a tremendous success story in the cloud and I’ve known Zoho CEO and founder Sridhar Vembu for many years. Here is my conversation from 2007, when Zoho was a new on-demand office suite. Sridhar shares his rather unorthodox but brilliantly successful entrepreneurial journey.

Also read my follow-up interview from 2016, where Sridhar discusses his strategy for Zoho’s next phase of growth, and his general observations about the dysfunctions in the cloud ecosystem.

Sramana: I would like to start this interview by tracing your background.

Sridhar: I was born in India, I went to Madras IIT for my undergraduate and came to Princeton to do my PhD in 1989. In 1994 I joined Qualcomm in San Diego. My PhD is in electrical engineering, so I really do not have a software background. I worked on wireless communication which was my area of interest at the time. I worked with Qualcomm for two years. I worked on CDMA, power control and some very detailed issues on wireless communications. That is how I got started in the tech industry.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Wiredrive Using Services to $10M

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

When we spoke in 2016, Co-founder Taylor Tyng had bootstrapped Wiredrive over a 17-year period to about $10 million. At that time, he had options to grow organically or raise money. Either way, an interesting journey.

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

Taylor Tyng: I was born south of Boston, Massachusetts in a town called Duxbury. I was born the son of two entrepreneurs who went through a line of businesses from early plastic mold injection technology companies and ended up working in a luxury travel business. I got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug early. I was raised in a middle class setting and my parents made sure that they raised children who were thoughtful and mindful. I had a real good platform to practice at an early age. By trade, I’m a designer. Art and commerce has always been a big part of my life.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to an Awesome Business Model

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

We’ve shared many Bootstrapping Using Services case studies with you here, as well as in the book on that topic. Inspyrus Founder CEO Nilay Banker’s story is particularly interesting because of the absolutely awesome business model that Nilay and his team had implemented by the time we spoke in 2017. Read on!

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

Nilay Banker: I’m from India, born and brought up in Ahmedabad, which used to be a sleepy town when I was born and growing up. It has now blossomed into a sprawling metro. It’s one of the five largest cities in India. I had a very interesting childhood. I grew up in a family of professionals. My father is an architect. My mother is a doctor. Pretty much, every person in my family is a professional with very few people who are not doctors. I consider myself a black sheep in the family.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to a Public Unicorn

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

Bootstrapping with Services is a tried and true strategy, including for building Unicorns. In our 2012 story, Alteryx Executive Chairman, CEO and founding partner Dean Stoecker talks about raising a Series A with $10 million in the bank. Today, Alteryx is a $4+ billion market cap public company. Dean bootstrapped with services early on, and then raised VC money.

Alteryx is a leading software developer and a pioneer of agile business intelligence technology with analytics. Prior to Alteryx, Dean led business development efforts for Integration Technologies, a systems integrator, where he helped develop technology that automated the selection of cellular tower locations for telecommunications clients like AT&T. He also helped develop the first geo-coding engine tied to Experian’s real estate mainframe system, and he built a sophisticated flood certificate engine for a leading insurer. Dean also served as Vice President of sales at Strategic Mapping, and in various sales and strategic roles at Donnelly Marketing Information Services.

Sramana Mitra: Dean, let’s start at the beginning of your personal story. What is the context for your entrepreneurial journey? Where are you from?

Dean Stoecker: I grew up in a family business in Colorado. I would sit around the table every day and hear about the trials and excitements of owning a business. I went to school at the University of Colorado. I had the opportunity to travel the world through a program called Semester at Sea. That was where I got the idea that I wanted to have my own business. After I graduated, I moved to California and got involved in the information business.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to $40M First

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

ActiveCampaign Founder CEO Jason VandeBoom had built a disciplined, profitable business when we spoke in 2019 and had scaled it to $40 million in 2017 revenue. The company was first bootstrapped using services, and later raised ~$20 million in funding.

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?

Jason VandeBoom: I was born and raised in a small town in Wisconsin about an hour out of Milwaukee, and started in technology from a consulting side of things at a very early age. Around 13 or so, I started taking on small projects. I was always interested in engineering and design. That ultimately led me to go to art school. I chose a school in Chicago for art school. That’s what brought me to Chicago.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Virtual Company to $25M

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

I am a huge fan of virtual companies. Here is a conversation from 2019 about a virtual company built with excellent execution by a Russian entrepreneur, Percona Founder CEO Peter Zaitsev.

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?

Peter Zaitsev: I was born in what was the Soviet Union. I studied Math and Computer Science in Moscow State University. I started my first startup company while studying.

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