6 Podcasts of Successful Startup Founders Sharing E-commerce Strategies

Can you still build e-commerce companies? Yes, niche e-commerce can still work, but you must differentiate. Entrepreneurs interested to learn how e-commerce and online startups are succeeding today should listen to these 30-minute podcast interviews with six startup founders who have managed to build quite profitable businesses.

Tom Fallenstein, President and CEO of Fun.com – Tom has built a niche e-commerce company up to $55 Million in revenue with no outside funding from rural Minnesota. He discusses his organic growth strategies, and how his company has impacted a rural eco-system profoundly by creating a large number of jobs.

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Bootstrapping to $100M+ from Arizona: JT Marino, CEO of Tuft & Needle (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How do you compete with these hundred different competitors?

JT Marino: We built the company our way. We cannot compete the same way they do. If we want to compete like a Casper, we cannot beat them dollar per dollar in ad spend. We have to be very careful how we purchase our marketing. We have to be very ruthless with measuring our return on ad spend.

If it’s not profitable, it just doesn’t work. We have to constantly move and reevaluate where we’re spending our money. We started opening stores and we have to be more scrappy where we measure all these things carefully. Our goal is to make sure >>>

Bootstrapping to $100M+ from Arizona: JT Marino, CEO of Tuft & Needle (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Where was that factory?

JT Marino: That was in Southern California. They were willing to take a chance. Their primary business wasn’t even mattresses. We had to go to a factory that didn’t produce mattresses and convince them to produce them. As far as the marketing side goes, we were using family, friends, social media, and doing some Google AdWords.

Customer service was critical to the whole experience. We did very well on that. We would follow up with every single customer and get feedback as to what they didn’t like. We used that to iterate on the product. That drove down our return rate and drove up >>>

Bootstrapping to $100M+ from Arizona: JT Marino, CEO of Tuft & Needle (Part 2)

JT Marino: We shut the site down and quit our jobs. We officially launched Tuft & Needle in October of 2012. The primary differentiation for us was that we were direct to consumer. We had just one model. This was very contrarian to the entire industry. There’s no company that makes one model. There’s firm, medium firm, medium soft. We wanted to just make one. Is it possible that most people actually need the same stuff?

We take that formula and offer that at a fair price, which was easy to do by going direct. We don’t have to have as big a margin because we’re not selling it to a store that marks it up again. We can operate at a much better price. We’re simplifying the process. >>>

Bootstrapping to $100M+ from Arizona: JT Marino, CEO of Tuft & Needle (Part 1)

Online mattress is the hottest e-commerce category these days, and here is yet another one delivering venture scale growth without venture capital.

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?

JT Marino: I was born in Phoenix, but I grew up in Pennsylvania. I went to Penn State. That’s where I met my co-founder, Daehee Park. From there, my career took me to Silicon Valley working for several startups. That’s where my co-founder and I stuck together. We were >>>

An Animal Lover’s Beautiful Journey: Elephant Pants CEO Nathan Coleman (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was the value proposition that you were going to contribute a portion of this to the cause of saving elephants?

Nathan Coleman: Exactly. That was the mission from day one. We sell these pants but we also contribute a portion of every sale to different elephant organizations. That’s how we ended up getting connected with AWS. They were our charity partner in the beginning.

Sramana Mitra: After the Kickstarter campaign where you raised $8,000, what was the next

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An Animal Lover’s Beautiful Journey: Elephant Pants CEO Nathan Coleman (Part 2)

Nathan Coleman: We reached out to different elephant organizations, one of which was the African Wildlife Foundation. We wanted to find a way to help these elephants. I don’t think they thought we could do much about it.

When we sent them a check for $1,500, that’s when we they realized we were serious. Our core product is the harem pants. They sell it all over Southeast Asia and Asia in general. We brought a whole bunch of pairs back for friends and family and everybody loved them. >>>

An Animal Lover’s Beautiful Journey: Elephant Pants CEO Nathan Coleman (Part 1)

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

Nathan is a true animal lover, and has built a wonderful niche e-commerce company with the mission of helping elephants. Beautiful story.

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

Nathan Coleman: I grew up in Westchester County, which is right outside New York City. I am 29 years >>>