Bootstrapping an Online Mattress Brand to $168 Million: Ricky Joshi and Ron Rudzin, Co-Founders of Saatva Mattress (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You’re saying that from your Google PPC, you would target only the region that is close to your manufacturing and distribution centers?

Ricky Joshi: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How much of this did you launch with in 2011?

Ricky Joshi: Are you asking which market?

Sramana Mitra: Yes. >>>

Bootstrapping an Online Mattress Brand to $168 Million: Ricky Joshi and Ron Rudzin, Co-Founders of Saatva Mattress (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: 2010 was when you decided to launch the company.

Ron Rudzin: That’s correct.

Ricky Joshi: It was a soft launch. We got kickstarted towards the tail-end of 2010.

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the very beginning. What is a soft launch? What were you doing in 2010? What were you trying to do to validate or get your ducks lined up? >>>

Bootstrapping an Online Mattress Brand to $168 Million: Ricky Joshi and Ron Rudzin, Co-Founders of Saatva Mattress (Part 1)

Ron and Ricky have built a luxury mattress brand online. Learn how.

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?

Ricky Joshi: I’m from Columbus, Ohio and went to Dartmouth for undergraduate. I went on to get my MBA from Columbia. I dabbled in various entrepreneurial activities and worked in the agency world as an Internet guru in IPG. My big claim to fame was sourcing and leading our investment into Facebook in 2006. I managed a $10 million business development deal there. I ended up creating my own agency and becoming a co-founder of Saatva. >>>

From Solo Entrepreneur to $65 Million in Revenue: Brazilian Entrepreneur Daniel Scandian, CEO of MadeiraMadeira (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You were almost like a solo entrepreneur with your brother helping you out.

Daniel Scandian: Yes. My brother took care of the company while I looked for investors. Then I had to talk to some investors in Brazil. In 10 months, I had a very nice investor from Brazil and from Argentina. I was also lucky to get help from Boston. Both the CEO and Founder of the two biggest companies that were in home improvement came in. In the middle of 2012, we got $4 million investment.

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From Solo Entrepreneur to $65 Million in Revenue: Brazilian Entrepreneur Daniel Scandian, CEO of MadeiraMadeira (Part 1)

Daniel had fully validated his business to significant revenue before going to investors. The result is spectacular! Read on…

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?

Daniel Scandian: I’m from Rio de Janeiro. I started my career a little bit different from other entrepreneurs. I was 14 years old when I started with Go Carting. My dream was to be a Formula One driver. I won the Formula 3 South America in 2001. That’s why I started late because I could get sponsors to go to GP2. I then came >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Deren Baker, CEO of Jumpshot (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are the emerging trends in the space and where do you see open problems?

Deren Baker: The biggest problem that we see out there is basically the one that we’re trying to solve. Most e-commerce companies or anyone who wants to understand their consumers’ online behavior have a very myopic field. They don’t have that larger lens to take a step back and say, “It’s great that I know what my consumer is doing on my own website.”

I’ve created this very complicated customer journey map with 500 interactions that you can have. >>>

Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: One clarification, both you and Liz kept your jobs while you were raising this convertible note round. For the whole time?

Nevin Shetty: Yes. That’s the amazing part. It was just the two of us working part-time. From across the nation, Lizzie had moved at this point.

Sramana Mitra: Where is she?

Nevin Shetty: She moved back to Seattle.

Sramana Mitra: During this period, you had a working product. The MVP was in business. You were able to experiment with customer acquisition strategy. >>>

Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you go with offshore or onshore?

Nevin Shetty: Since it’s very high-touch front-end stuff, we wanted someone we could meet with. We chose a dev shop in New York. They had done e-commerce before. Frankly, they just had very good project management. We were able to talk with them and think through things strategically. It was very helpful because we didn’t know how to architect the website. They were seemingly helpful with that.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to get a minimum viable product out?

Nevin Shetty: I would say it took seven months. >>>