Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Was it mostly direct selling through LinkedIn?

Peter Ord: We were 100% outbound all the way to our Series A. Our Series A was raised in October 2020. We sourced three lists that we believe represent ideal customer profiles. The first list was companies that have recently raised. The second was competitors of our current competitors. The third list was people whose job roles have changed in LinkedIn that had implementation manager in their title. Those three lists are our outbound effort. We got all the way to $2 million ARR just by pure outbound approach.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Using Services to $26M and a Fabulous Exit

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

Founder CEO Vamsi Kora has bootstrapped Gathi Analytics to over $26 million in revenue in four years and exited at a fabulous multiple. Much to learn from his 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?

Vamsi Kora: I’m from south India, from a village in Rajamundry, which is very close to the Bay of Bengal. I did Mechanical Engineering. Right after it, I went to have one of the very few well-paid careers at that time. I couldn’t afford to come to the US. So I went into merchant shipping and roamed around the world for about three years. I made two and half rounds around the equator.

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558th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Deepak Balakrishna, Adya (Part 1)

Deepak Balakrishna, Co-founder CEO of Adya, which was acquired by Qualys. We review his lessons from the trenches, steering a Bootstrapping to Exit transaction.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with at the 1Mby1M premium program with Adya, which was acquired by Qualys. Qualys, as you might know, is a public cyber security company. Adya was also in the cyber security space. I invited Deepak to talk about exit strategy and what he went through.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the skillset of that employee that you brought in?

Peter Ord: He was a fellow sales leader. I was supporting the product.

Sramana Mitra: The agency that you were working with was maintaining the product.

Peter Ord: Right. We were selling and getting more customers. Todd, who was that first employee, came to me and said, “I don’t have the time to support this. I can’t handle these calls. We need to find an operations person.” That’s when I hired my third employee in December of 2018. He’s won CEO of the Year from Silicon Slopes in Utah.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Who was going to build the product? You are not a technical person, right?

Peter Ord: I sent my resignation to my boss when I was on vacation. Part of the reason was, I had gotten a number of calls from car dealers who were upset with the implementation during my vacation. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My wife was still frustrated that I went downstairs, got white paper from the business office, and I just stayed upstairs in the hotel room the whole day just mocking out what the system should look like.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You said you joined the company where they were going to do homebuilder, but then the company imploded. Did you talk about one or two companies?

Peter Ord: One company. The company I joined had a product that catered to automotive dealers. They also aspired to build a similar product for homebuilders.

Sramana Mitra: That automotive product did work. In that implementation, you learned that the implementation was cumbersome and complex. Is that what you’re saying?

SudShare CEO on Bootstrapping a Two-Sided Marketplace

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

This is an insightful story of how SudShare CEO Mort Fertel’s family has built an interesting two-sided marketplace business for outsourcing laundry services.

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

Mort Fertel: I was born in Philadelphia. I went to college in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. I was in Philly for the first 21 years of my life. I moved to New York after college.

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Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 1)

We’re big fans of solo entrepreneurs. Peter validated his business with real paying customers before he raised money; always the best strategy.

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?