Bootstrapping a Perishable Meat Business To Significant Scale: ButcherBox CEO Mike Salguero (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What were the business metrics with that $500,000 and with that $1.2 million? How was the business moving?

Mike Salguero: When we first bought the website, it was a subscription business where the maker would pay an annual fee to be on the website. We scaled it pretty well. We had a whole team of salespeople and had all these leads.

Serial Entrepreneurship in Ad and Content Networks: inPowered CEO Peyman Nilforoush (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the name of your ad network?

Peyman Nilforoush: NetShelter. 

Sramana Mitra: What years were these?

Peyman Nilforoush: From late 1999 to 2008. In 2008, we raised $26 million in venture capital. We moved to San Francisco in 2009 and started building out the company and scaling it out. We ended up selling the company in 2013.

Serial Entrepreneurship in Ad and Content Networks: inPowered CEO Peyman Nilforoush (Part 1)

Peyman has done two startups in the ad network and content network field, and this discussion takes us through that journey.

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?

Bootstrapping a Perishable Meat Business To Significant Scale: ButcherBox CEO Mike Salguero (Part 1)

This is a fascinating story of a subscription service for high-quality meat being delivered to consumer homes.

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

Bootstrapping with Services from Poland to a US SaaS Company: Stefan Batory, CEO of Booksy (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How did you acquire this very fragmented customer base?

Stefan Batory: Initially, we weren’t been thinking about that because we were supposed to work with that partner from southeast Florida who was supposed to acquire clients for us.

Bootstrapping with Services from Poland to a US SaaS Company: Stefan Batory, CEO of Booksy (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I thought you were trying to reposition the taxi company to doing a marketplace. How did you get to the software house?

Stefan Batory: I did not reposition the taxi business. I just kept it growing. At the same time, I was also running a small division of the software development house, which was a spinoff from that original software development house.

Bootstrapping with Services from Poland to a US SaaS Company: Stefan Batory, CEO of Booksy (Part 3)

Stefan Batory: At the same time, I was preparing for a Marathon race on the Sands. It’s a marathon across the Sahara desert. You have to carry a backpack with all your food and supplies to survive in the desert.

I started having some aches and pains in my legs, so I had to see a physiotherapist. Being a father of two, I wanted to spend some time with my children after I got back home from work. I used to do my workouts at 9PM or 10PM.

Bootstrapping with Services from Poland to a US SaaS Company: Stefan Batory, CEO of Booksy (Part 2)

Stefan Batory: After 12 years of running that first company, I got a little bit tired of growing a company that was in the service business. To double the revenue, I had to double the headcount. When we got to over 200 engineers, I didn’t feel like I wanted to hire another 200 to double our revenue the next year and then 400 to double it the following year.

I started looking for a different business model that would help me to grow the topline without growing the team as much. At the end of 2011, I decided to launch the first taxi hailing app in Poland. We launched that in February 2012.