Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do this story a bit more as a journey. What year did you face the problem that you needed some sort of a system for managing your physical therapy practice?

Heidi Jannenga: It was an ongoing problem from 2003 to 2008 where the company that I was working with had promised that they would be transitioning to some sort of a documentation system. It never happened. We were using transcription and dictation.

Finally, it was a decision, “I’m running these practices now. I want to take this issue head on. I think we can find a solution to solve >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 1)

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

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later is the 1M/1M mantra. Ashik Ahmed tells his story of bootstrapping to $10 Million before raising $25 Million in the first external financing.

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

Ashik Ahmed: I was born in Bangladesh. In 1997, my whole family migrated to Melbourne in Australia. I did my high school education as well as university in Melbourne. Then we moved to Sydney where I started working for my co-founder. My co-founder >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 1)

Heidi and her co-founder have bootstrapped WebPT to significant traction, then raised a small angel round. 2016 revenue was $40 million. The company has sold 51% stake to private equity and the founders have already experienced significant liquidity. Excellent story of a female entrepreneur who doesn’t make excuses. She just executes.

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?

Heidi Jannenga: I was born in Texas to two immigrant parents. My dad immigrated from Austria and my mom is a first-generation American born in Hawaii. She’s Japanese. We moved to Winter Park, Florida when I was six years old. I was a multi-sport athlete in high school. I ended up playing basketball in college at UC Davis in Northern California. I injured my knee in my junior year. >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Have you started seeing revenues escalate from that yet?

Vaclav Muchna: In the United States, this year we are going to be close to $3 million. Our business has a very long sales cycle. We expect that the bigger revenue growth is going to happen next year.

Sramana Mitra: You said you did $30 million in 2016, right?

Vaclav Muchna: Our fiscal year is from July to June. In the fiscal year that ended in June 2016, revenue was $30 million.

Sramana Mitra: This is all business that you’ve built organically. There is no outside funding?

>>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You have a tremendous revenue stream. Where are you now? How far along are you?

Nilay Banker: We are getting into the tens of millions of dollars. We are doubling every year in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: How many people?

Nilay Banker: Now, we are close to 50 people. Almost everybody is in the US. We are focusing on international expansion. Right now, most of our customers have their headquarters in the US. We are focusing on expansion to Europe and then Asia-Pacific, as well as Australia and New Zealand. >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What do you do with the venture capital fund? Do you invest in companies in the Czech Republic or in eastern Europe? What is the scope?

Vaclav Muchna: I suggest we take it chronologically.

Sramana Mitra: Sure.

Vaclav Muchna: Today, we are doing a lot of things, but the biggest pie of revenue is from the print management product. Back in 2006, we had another big milestone that opened the German market for us. I mentioned in the beginning of the interview that we have these external control units that were basically terminals that we use for user interaction. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to be able to know that you could actually save money and for you to make money on that gain share model? How long was that process of fully validating the business model?

Nilay Banker: Typically, it takes from 6 to 12 months by the time the customers start seeing benefits. The benefits are multi-fold. There are soft benefits which are in terms of process efficiency and just reduction in head count. We consider those as soft benefits. Then there are the hard benefits which is the draw dollar cost savings through discount management.

It also takes some time for the hard dollar savings to ramp up adoption not only by our customers but, more importantly, by their suppliers who get on to the discount management program and slowly start taking advantage of early payment discounts. In most cases, they start realizing about 75% of the benefits >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: It must have been very helpful for you to recruit a bunch of channel partners who would then go and sell that same solution to other major players.

Vaclav Muchna: Exactly. Once they started with us, there was another deal with the headquarters of a central European bank. That helped us to build the relationship through the channel. We took the decision that we would be 100% indirect. Later on, we developed that model where the vast majority of our partners not only sell our product, but they also support it. We only support our partners and they go and support the end customers. If something goes wrong, the customer would call the channel partners. >>>