Bootstrapping Using Services: Sylvana Caridi Coche, CEO of Gravity Pro (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In the first year of business, how much did you do revenue-wise?

Sylvana Caridi Coche: I did $7.5 million in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: That’s incredible.

Sylvana Caridi Coche: Yes, that was very unique.

Sramana Mitra: That was with 20 people. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you questions so that we can trace your journey of how you put this business together block by block. Tell me how you acquired your first customers for this business.

Ruslan Fazlyev: We didn’t really acquire customers for our business. We got case-by-case freelance requests to build an online store because there were no existing PHP platforms back then. Every store needed to be coded from scratch. We got contracts through freelance marketplaces like Elance.

Sramana Mitra: You were basically marketing your technical development skills on Elance and you were getting companies to outsource e-commerce site development work to you.

Ruslan Fazlyev: Exactly. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Sylvana Caridi Coche, CEO of Gravity Pro (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of this journey in 2007. You went to SAP and said you wanted to resell. Where did you go to seek your first clients?

Sylvana Caridi Coche: My clients call me. I actually have to pick the clients. Usually people who start a company to do implementations in SAP start as an implementation company. From there, they take a project. Or, they’re like an IBM who invests in SAP and start a whole practice. For me, it was different because the customers were calling me.

Every time I’d go to SAP and say, “I have a new license.” They’d say, “Go work with the other partners.” The other partners would want to compete with me on >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 1)

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

We’ve discussed Bootstrapping Using Services extensively over the years. Ruslan used eLance (not Upwork) to source service projects, then built, first a platform+services business that scaled to over $10 million in revenue. Then he spun off a pure play e-commerce platform business that now has over a million merchants using it. Revenue is over $5 million.

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?

Ruslan Fazlyev: I was born in a very little town in Russia. I grew up in Ulyanovsk, which is a city on the Russian river Volga. The city that you grew up in interests you more than the place of birth.What’s interesting about that place is it’s the place where Lenin was born – the guy who founded USSR. Because it’s >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Sylvana Caridi Coche, CEO of Gravity Pro (Part 1)

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

Sylvana has an aura of no nonsense, no bullshit confidence about her that I find immensely attractive. Read her story to feel the force of sheer energy, smarts, and execution to learn how she did it!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as Gravity Pro.

Sylvana Caridi Coche: I’m 42. I was born and raised in France. My parents were from Italy. They moved from Italy to France to find work because, at that time, it was hard for them because they were both illiterate. I was the last kid and grew up in a very low-class environment. I studied all the way to my doctorate, but I did not do my thesis because I went to work. >>>

Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You said you’ve raised about $90 million. With all these changes and pivots, how has revenue in the new model tracked? Are you able to justify that kind of financing from a market cap point of view? I’m not talking about foo-foo market cap. I’m talking about market cap that is derived out of fundamentals.

Matt MacInnis: It has been punishing from an ownership perspective. Last year, the market was crazy. We did a small round at a really high multiple. This year, we did a bigger round. We did $25 million with Sapphire Ventures. That should take us to profitability. We gave up even more ownership. That part of it was tough. >>>

Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How much investment did you get from Techstars?

Nevin Shetty: Techstars always puts in $100,000.

Sramana Mitra: How much equity did you give for that?

Nevin Shetty: Around 7%.

Sramana Mitra: You raised more money coming out of Techstars? >>>

Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When you were starting to see this traction from Starbucks, KMPG, and other corporates, what kind of a business model did you follow in these deals?

Matt MacInnis: We knew it was going to be SaaS. We gave Starbucks a very sweet deal. They got extra for the platform for all their district managers on a one-year subscription agreement. The important set of things that happened at that moment in time was that we decided to go and recruit a VP of Sales. Keep in mind I had on staff a consumer marketer who was wrong for enterprise marketing. I had consumer engineers. You had to retool the whole company. It was really difficult to see that we were going to pivot from consumer. >>>