Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping KURU Footwear from Utah

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

To succeed in e-commerce today, you need to look for unserved niches with unique products. Learn how KURU Footwear Founder Bret Rasmussen bootstrapped an e-commerce startup from Utah.

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

Bret Rasmussen: I was born in Utah, but my parents quickly moved to Indiana. We actually lived a few years in Italy until I was about eight or nine years old. Then we moved to Taiwan and then back to Indiana. I graduated high school in Texas and then I went to college out west here in Utah. 

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Niche E-Commerce Company Modded Euros

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

This conversation with Modded Euros Co-founder Sean Dawes from 2019 is a comprehensive discussion on how to bootstrap a niche e-commerce venture with a lean team and effective use of inventory financing. You can listen to the podcast interview here and watch the interview here:

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?

Sean Dawes: I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I haven’t gone too far away from my hometown as my company is based out of West Chester, Pennsylvania, which is 20 or 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia.

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped with Services, Raised Money, and then Acquired by Salesforce

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

John Stewart and his co-founder have built MapAnything from Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia. When we spoke in 2018, he had raised over $40 million in funding, proving that you can build sizable VC-funded SaaS businesses from anywhere. MapAnything was sold to Salesforce in May 2019.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? Give us some early story.

John Stewart: I’m from upstate New York. I’m from a middle class background. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. My father was in the construction business. He was an architect. I went to school in New England for Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts and graduated in 1997.

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped First, Raised Money Later from Udupi, Karnataka

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

Robosoft Founder Rohith Bhat started a services company in his hometown – a small town on the west coast of Karnataka, India. When we spoke in 2017, fifteen years later, the company was generating $18 million in revenue and had raised two sizable rounds of VC funding. I found the story exhilarating!

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?

Rohith Bhat: I was born in Udupi, India. It’s a small town on the west coast of the country. Then I went to the local school and university and studied engineering and computer science in 1992. Once I finished engineering, I had an opportunity to go on to work for a company in Japan for Recosoft. I worked for this company for around three and a half years.

>>>

558th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Deepak Balakrishna, Adya

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | RSS

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise in the second round?

Jonny Grubin: Probably about £300,000. In total, we raised about £900,000.

Sramana Mitra: Excellent. I love capital-efficient businesses.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: 2014 and 2015, more of the same?

Jonny Grubin: Our focus and what I had built this business around was gifting samples to a friend. We were doing well with that. There was nobody else in the space. Brands loved it. We were on a pretty exciting trajectory. We had a lot of brands come to us saying, “We want to be able to sample in other ways. We don’t do it through just a gifting experience.” It was only down to my stubbornness that we focused solely on gifting for so long.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping with a Paycheck to over $15M Revenue: SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much did Avon pay you?

Jonny Grubin: They paid me £1,000 which seemed like a huge amount of money at that time. It was about validating it all. We were still very much bootstrapped. I didn’t want to be greedy. I need to charge them something. A thousand pounds seemed like a fair price and it seemed like I could map out how to get to breakeven in a short period of time.

Sramana Mitra: What happened after that? How did you go about building on that concept?