Bootstrapping a Two-sided Marketplace: Mort Fertel, CEO of SudShare (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Who built the company? You or your son?

Mort Fertel: Both. We’re co-founders.

Sramana Mitra: The idea sounds great. It came out of your personal observation of your wife’s woes with laundry. It sounds like your son has the technical expertise. What was he doing at that time when he decided to put together this app?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bay Dynamics Co-founders Bootstrapped Using Services

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

Bay Dynamics Co-founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte wanted to work together on a new venture. They first built a services company, then introduced an OEM product, and eventually bootstrapped a product under their own brand. When we spoke in 2016, the company had just raised its first venture money after many years of being in business as a profitable, growing entity.

Sramana Mitra: One of you should probably get started. I want to go back to the very beginning of your journey, and learn about your pre-Bay Dynamics story. Where were you born, raised and, in what kind of background?

Feris Rifai: I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. That’s where I was raised till I was 18 years old. I then came to the United States to go to college. I went to school at Indiana University. It was a great experience for me. Throughout my journey when I was much younger in Lebanon, it was a bit of a difficult upbringing because we couldn’t find a way to get safety to be a part of our lives. I think it’s taught me a lot. It has helped me be, believe it or not, very optimistic.

>>>

Bootstrapping a Two-Sided Marketplace: Mort Fertel, CEO of SudShare (Part 1)

This is an insightful story of a family that 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?

548th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder of Boast.ai (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: ARR is now your business model right?

Lloyed Lobo: We look at it as ARR. For every year a company does R&D, they pay us. It’s recurring. Although we take a percentage, it’s very consistent with how much R&D they do. That’s how we model it out. 

Sramana Mitra: How many customers is $10 million ARR for you?

548th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder of Boast.ai (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How did you manage the early phase where you had to stay afloat to get paid?

Lloyed Lobo: With the help of loans, houses bank loans, credit cards, and very lean teams.

Sramana Mitra: How many were you?

Lloyed Lobo: When we started, it was just me and my co-founder. Then there was a whole bunch of people. It was hard making payroll. A lot of credit to my co-founder because he funded it out of his personal cash to make payroll many times. We also got loans on my house and Alex’s house. They were very hard times. One of the things for us was our wives have been very supportive.

Best of Bootstrapping: Wrike Founder Bootstrapped First, Raised Money Later

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

Wrike Founder Andrew Filev has built a company with a rigorous data-driven approach. Learn how from our conversation in 2015.

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?

Andrew Filev: I was born in St. Petersburg in Russia. I got interested in computers pretty early. I spent a lot of my childhood playing with computers, building and programming, and designing. I also had a big interest in other sciences as well. I competed in different math, physics, and chemistry competitions.

>>>

548th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder of Boast.ai (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let me probe one thing here. When you were doing this manual customer servicing, was it more of a rule-based engine than pure AI?

Lloyed Lobo: First, it was fully manual. The rules-based engine was the Wizard-of-Oz MVP. It looks like technology but, on the backend, humans are doing it. There are two elements. You are collecting data. Then you need to process that data and generate the outcome. Then we started doing this data collection online where people can upload everything.

Bootstrapping Using Services, then Raising $10M and Scaling to $16M: EZOPS Co-Founders Sarva Srinivasan and Dutt Chintalapati (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In 2018, are you still self-financed?

Sarva Srinivasan: Yes. At the end of 2018, we did a Series A. 

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise?

Sarva Srinivasan: $10 million.