Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 1)

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

Mikko has steadily built an excellent SaaS company from Finland and is now expanding into the US as well. Read on for more.

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

Mikko Honkanen: I was born in a small town in Finland 20 miles up north from Helsinki. I studied at Helsinki School of Economics. I also studied at Oxford. Then I spent the last 10 years in the SaaS business. I spent almost seven years at a Norwegian company called Meltwater. >>>

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I can totally see that. The follow-on question from there though is that the wounds of the media industry are very deep. Their monetization problems are very deep. Their existential crisis is very deep. To what extent do you view that issue as a threat to your long-term sustenance?

Brock Berry: It’s an interesting question. We are continually diversifying our business. Today, we work with radio stations, TV stations, newspapers, and some small agencies. Beyond that, we work with companies that can be labeled as non-traditional. These are media channels that are not easy to define but they work with local business owners. We have, at least, the group of five. >>>

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Could you throw some light on what kind of revenue sharing you were doing? It sounds like that is the core of your business model.

Brock Berry: For the services part of what we do, the media company takes 70 cents out of every dollar they sell. That’s the revenue share so to speak. If you think about our business model from a manufacturing perspective, we’re more of a distributor in that relationship. These folks that we work with are more like retail locations. >>>

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How much of what you are saying you do is done manually versus in software?

Brock Berry: The recommendation part of the software is completely automated via the technology software platform. The trafficking of all the campaigns that are sold is also automated right from the proposal to the ad-serving tools including the input into an order management system to keep track of the history and background changes to the campaign.

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Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was that business doing that allowed it to grow that fast?

Brock Berry: That’s exactly why we started AdCellerant. The market was really ready for that type of traction and we were bringing these highly-sophisticated marketing strategies to local business owners. We were doing that through the media companies that we worked with, which had thousands of sales people.

Because of the massive sales force and the fact that we are able to leverage that sales force for free, we >>>

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping to $10M from Colorado: AdCellerant Co-Founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson (Part 1)

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

Love and startups go hand in hand for Brock and Shelby who are helping media companies generate seven-figure revenue streams.

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

Brock Berry: Thanks for having us. I’m the Founder and CEO of AdCellerant. I’m from Indiana >>>

Bootstrapping to $80 Million from Canada: Rob Purdy, CEO of Power2Motivate (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What was the first year of that product being revenue-generating?

Rob Purdy: It would have started generating a little bit of revenue in 2012. At that point in time, we had 20 licensees for Power2Motivate. The only people using the reward component was us and our direct customers. The other 19 licensees were not using our reward platform. We had $20 million revenue in rewards.

Sramana Mitra: What did that do to your business in 2013 and 2014? >>>

Bootstrapping to $80 Million from Canada: Rob Purdy, CEO of Power2Motivate (Part 6)

Rob Purdy: It is. It has worked very well. It has been a good ride for all the shareholders who came in at that time because they’ve been receiving dividends for the last three and a half years. The valuation of the business has grown significantly in six years.

Sramana Mitra: These are people that you knew. You basically used personal relationships.

Rob Purdy: Yes. This was a combination of employees as well as business partners that we had built up over the years. Ben, out of Australia, bought 10% of the company. We had another partner do the same thing. Then we had some external people >>>