Bootstrapping to $10 Million Using Services: Sameer Maggon, CEO of SearchStax (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the pricing?

Sameer Maggon: The first offering that we sold was for about $10,000 a year. 

Sramana Mitra: How did that business ramp? When you start off with a bootstrapping with services model, your services revenues far outpace product revenues. Gradually, it starts to tilt.

Best of Bootstrapping: Co-founders Bootstrapped BeenVerified with Angel Money

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

Building businesses has become cheaper by several orders of magnitude. When we spoke in 2015, Co-founder Josh Levy and his team took just over $2 million in angel financing, and had built a profitable business in New York. For those entrepreneurs facing the Series A crunch, this is an important story to follow. You will do fine if you have patient angels, and just use their investment to bootstrap to profitability.

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

Josh Levy: I was born in New Jersey. I went to high school in New Jersey. I went to the University of Maryland for college where I got an undergraduate degree in Finance. I also did a minor in entrepreneurship. I now live in Brooklyn. BeenVerified is headquartered in New York City. I’ve been on the East Coast my whole life.

>>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million Using Services: Sameer Maggon, CEO of SearchStax (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What go-to-market strategy are you following? Is it a SaaS product that you go to market with?

Sameer Maggon: SearchStax, at a high level, is a search company. We offer Search-as-a-Service. It’s a SaaS/PaaS offering that is provided for mid-market to large enterprises on a subscription basis. 

Sramana Mitra: So it’s a SaaS product.

Bootstrapping to $10 Million Using Services: Sameer Maggon, CEO of SearchStax (Part 1)

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

Excellently navigated journey!

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

Sameer Maggon: I grew up in Delhi. I did my engineering in Computer Science from Pune. Then I came back to my hometown to work for a document management company. Then I decided to learn more. I came to USC in Los Angeles and did my Masters in Computer Science. Since then, I’ve been in LA and worked in a variety of startups and larger companies in the greater Los Angeles area. 

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping the First Venture, Raising Money for the Second

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

As a variation on our ‘Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later’ theme, we also see many entrepreneurs who have bootstrapped a first company (or business), and then gone onto venture-fund a second. Christian Chabot built Tableau Software in this mode. Sridhar Vembu built Zoho. We have numerous examples of this tried-and-true path. Something to consider for first-time entrepreneurs chasing venture capital and Unicorns. Since speaking with cVidya Founder Alon Aginsky in 2015, cVidya was acquired by Amdocs in 2016.

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

Alon Aginsky: I was born and raised in Israel. After completing my army duty, I found myself in New York as a young entrepreneur trying to make it. Luckily, I was able to pick an opportunity and start a company in the area of call accounting that later became billing for small operators. That company that I started was a one-man show in the Empire State Building. I managed, after seven years, to take it public on NASDAQ.

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped HireVue While in School, Raised Money Later, All in Utah

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

True to our mantra, Co-founder Mark Newman bootstrapped HireVue to $1M in revenue before raising the first funding. When we spoke in 2015, the company had raised a total of $92 million, and was doing $30 million in revenue. Excellent case study to study!

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

Mark Newman: I was born in Northern Canada, about 400 miles north of Toronto, in a small town called Timmons. I was a mining industry brat. My dad designed and built the copper smelters. He was a chemistry and metallurgy nut whose favorite thing was taking rocks and turning them into solid bars of something. Living up there, you were able to be blissfully unaware. You live in a small little town. You had chances to go to lakes and kick through trees.

>>>

Are You Building a Startup While Working Full Time?

Most adult professionals have jobs, families, and other responsibilities. People working in the tech industry have big salaries to forego if they want to start a company.

So many ambitious folks start to build their technology startups while working full-time. Having a job means your income doesn’t depend on the immediate success of your startup business. We call this method Bootstrapping with a Paycheck. 

The One Million by One Million (1Mby1M) virtual accelerator offers a core methodology for doing this. The course Bootstrapping a Startup with a Paycheck with Sramana Mitra takes you through the whole process with excellent case studies. 

We’ll also be holding a FREE Roundtable Mentoring Session to support entrepreneurs bootstrapping with a paycheck on Oct. 7 at 8 a.m. PDT: REGISTER HERE 

Interested in getting more support while bootstrapping your startup with a paycheck? Apply to win a one-year scholarship to the 1Mby1M Premium program, sponsored by DataStax, valued at $1000. Check out The DataStax – 1Mby1M Startup Challenge.

>>>

12 Udemy Courses on How To Build a Startup While Working Full Time

Most adult professionals have jobs, families, and other responsibilities. People working in the tech industry have big salaries to forego if they want to start a company.