Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Startup with a Paycheck to Exit: Jay Perkins, Co-founder of Kettlebell Kings (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do? You said you started a company on the BigCommerce platform?

Jay Perkins: I started a business called Kettlebell Kings while I was still employed at BigCommerce. Kettlebells are basically fitness equipment. Along with my co-founders, we would hold meetings for a year and a half leading up to when we formally launched. We knew we wanted to start a business.

We were like-minded, but we didn’t know what we wanted to sell. We would kick around ideas. We eventually decided on kettlebells. There just weren’t a lot of companies focused on building a product and lifestyle brand. We just went for it.

Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Startup with a Paycheck to Exit: Jay Perkins, Co-founder of Kettlebell Kings (Part 1)

There are roll-ups of e-commerce brands going on right now. This case study delves into one such that has exited into a roll-up effort.

Jay Perkins currently runs Living.Fit which produces digital workouts, fitness education courses, and fitness equipment.

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

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a 2-Sided Marketplace to $10M

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

CEO Sal Akbani had bootstrapped Gateway Classic Cars to over $10 million in revenue when we spoke in 2017. This is a great story of how a two-sided marketplace was masterfully seeded and scaled in a niche market.

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?

Sal Akbani: We have the same ancestry. My parents were from India. I was born in Pakistan. My mother is from Calcutta. My dad is from Bombay.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Ultra Mobile to Over $100 Million

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

I have long believed that Go BIG or Go HOME is complete BS. I have seen entrepreneur after entrepreneur build a small but profitable, slower growth business as a first outing, followed by a much larger, higher growth business as a follow-on venture. When we spoke in 2017, Ultra Mobile Co-founder Rizwan Kassim had done exactly that.

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?

Rizwan Kassim: My mom is from East Africa. My father was born in Karachi. They both came here in the 70’s. I was born in Simi Valley, California, and lived there for about a decade and then moved up to Victorville. I went to UCLA.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Master Bootstrappers with $1+ Billion in Exits

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

There’s a GIGANTIC myth in the startup ecosystem. Go BIG or Go HOME! Raise GOBS of venture capital. Otherwise, you can’t build anything big. It’s GIGANTIC BS!

Watch this inspiring 2 minute 09 second video and learn how the Turakhia brothers have created over a billion dollars of personal wealth through significant exits without raising any venture capital:

Capital efficient ventures often end up creating a lot more money for entrepreneurs.

Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock, and his brother Divyank have bootstrapped Directi, a portfolio of Internet businesses over the last ~20 years. In 2014, they had their first $160 million exit. In 2016, they had a second $900 million exit. It’s a very interesting story of masterful business acumen and disciplined fundamentals-driven execution. Not a penny of external financing involved when we spoke in 2017, by the way.

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?

Bhavin Turakhia: I was born and raised in Mumbai. My parents are originally from there. I went to school there. In many ways, the seeds for my entrepreneurship career were largely sown there. I remember in 1989, I was in the sixth grade when the school installed their very first computer room. I’m talking about a time when there was no Internet. There was no Windows. It was just GWBasic and MS-DOS. It was love at first sight.

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Best of Bootstrapping: PrecisionLender Bootstrapped to Over $10M from North Carolina

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

CEO Carl Ryden and his co-founders had bootstrapped Precision Lender to over $10 million from North Carolina when we spoke in 2017. This is a superb story, including how the company has formulated an AI agent, Andi.

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?

Carl Ryden: I was born in North Carolina. I grew up in eastern North Carolina in a little town called Goldsboro. Folks don’t know where that is. It’s about halfway between Raleigh and the coast. For folks who do know, I would later confess that I’m not really from Goldsboro. I’m from an area of a county that’s closest to Goldsboro, deep in the rural part of North Carolina.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Niche E-commerce Brand Big Barker

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

We’ve talked about niche, proprietary e-commerce brands and how entrepreneurs are building businesses around different concepts. Founder Eric Shannon shared the story of Big Barker, a dog bed for large dogs, with me in 2017.

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?

Eric Shannon: I was born in Pennsylvania in a suburb about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I went to Temple University. I was a Finance major. After school, I moved to California and took a job in banking. I hated it and was terrible at it. I had a couple of other jobs and eventually discovered the internet side of the economy. I became very attached to it. I started in that industry in 2004.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Founder Bootstrapped to Over $10M from Australia

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

This is another wonderful story of a founder who diligently scaled his startup. DNA Behavior Founder Hugh Massie had bootstrapped to over $10 Million in revenue when we spoke in 2017.

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?

Hugh Massie: I was born in Sydney, Australia. I was privately-educated at a very good private school. When I finished that, I earned a degree in Commerce and Economics at the University of New South Wales. Following that, I became a Chartered Accountant and worked with Arthur Andersen for 10 years in auditing, mainly in the tax area. I worked in the Sydney office and then in the Singapore and Thailand offices as well.

After 10 years, I wanted to go out on the street and become an entrepreneur. That was really the start of my entrepreneurial journey. I had always been an investor though, ever since the age of 20. As soon as I got my first job, I bought a house and got an investment rental property and was always doing things that were related to investing.

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