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Bootstrapping Using Services From Sweden: Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo (Part 4)

Tobi Andersson: I spent many hours meeting customers telling them about my efforts. We were able to launch our platform which was called Dapresy Pro. That is the platform that we are offering to the market today. The first version of Dapresy Pro was made to address each customer’s needs.

I told them, “I’m going to ask you to stop using this customized solution from us and I need you to transition to this new software. There is no middle ground here. We need to stop working with the customized solutions.” I didn’t have the money to keep the generic platform and, at the same time, maintain these unique platforms. This was the tough part in my life because I basically spend my days on the phone getting complaints from customers. I >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services From Sweden: Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What changes did you make? How did you move to the next phase of the journey?

Tobi Andersson: I decided two things. One is that I’m going to be an international company, which means I should have an offering that can help grow the company outside Sweden. Sweden is a great market. It’s an early adopter market, but it’s a small market. I decided that I had to create a foundation here in terms of our offering.

I also needed to create a scalable company without adding lots of people. I decided that I was going to create a foundation to scale revenue faster than fixed cost. Today, a lot of companies bring in external capital very early and use this capital to burn money and to create something that is not fully meeting the market demand. I >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services From Sweden: Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary. What was your next step to go in that direction? Did you write a software? Did you use other people’s technology and showed them how to use it?

Tobi Andersson: This is also the next lesson here in becoming an entrepreneur. I realized that there is a need in the market for doing this. What I’d like to share with everybody is the best way to be successful is to stay close to the market. Ask them what they need but also be very sober about it. Sometimes the market doesn’t fully understand what they need because they don’t know what can be done. I talked to the customers and then I added my own vision about that. I started to visualize the data.

Initially, I purchased off-the-shelf software. I purchased well-known products like BI tools and reporting tools. I tried to visualize this market research data with off-the-shelf tools. I spent, more or less, three years doing this. Looking back, it was a time when I learned a lot. I went to customers. I asked them, >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services From Sweden: Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo (Part 1)

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

European entrepreneurs often successfully bootstrap using services. The chasing investor from the get go disease is less prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic, although the virus from Silicon Valley has been traveling now to all corners of the world. Dapresy has crossed $7 million in annual revenue with minimum outside financing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. It sounds like, Tobi, you’re the founder. Maybe, we’ll start with you and let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Tobi Andersson: I was born in Sweden, in the Swedish countryside. Very early on in my life, I decided that one day I would like to earn the money to have the opportunity to buy a really big farm. That has always been my vision – to create something that, on one hand, can give me money but on the other >>>

Bootstrapping with Services from London: Gurman Hundal, CEO of Media IQ (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You said you have a team in India. How are you finding building a team in India at this point? Bangalore is a talent war economy.

Gurman Hundal: It’s a massively fun and exciting journey we’ve had in India. It’s one of the proudest journeys we’ve had. The best part of Media IQ is the culture and the real asset of this company is the people. A testament to that is we have staff of over 300 people now. In our six-year history, only about 15 people have left the firm. Our staff retention rate is well above 90%. It’s really difficult in India because there’s a lot of challenges. The fact that we managed to create a culture and environment that can, not only attract talent, but also retain talent is a success for us.

Sramana Mitra: When you talk about your differentiated culture, what is it about the culture that is differentiated? Why do people like it? >>>

Bootstrapping with Services from London: Gurman Hundal, CEO of Media IQ (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Who was your first client and how did you get that client?

Gurman Hundal: We went down the route of working with media agencies who represented the clients. Our first clients came from big agency groups like Publicist Media. Our first big advertisers were the likes of the Weight Watchers, Honda, British Airways, and O2. It started with some of the big UK brands but it was coming through their agencies.

Sramana Mitra: You were subcontracting with them? What were the terms of how you worked with these big agencies?

Gurman Hundal: We were just their media supplier. They would say, “We’ve got  a million dollars of budget from a client. We’re going to give you $100,000.” This is campaign by campaign. >>>

Cross Border E-Commerce in Africa: Mall For Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Besides this bank deal, was there any other strategic moves that you made that helped you accelerate?

Chris Folayan: There are many ways you can look at competitors. Who are our competitors? Competitors came to us in different forms and fashion. There were the brick-and-mortar stores and online stores that have a limited number of resources. We looked at all of these competitors and tried to figure out how we can differentiate ourselves. What is our USP? We ended up coming up with something that I think sets us apart. We ran with it really hard. We had the ability to bring stuff into the country in the cheapest and the fastest way, and we have the most diverse selection. Providing those three benefits and throwing that out to the public and letting them know that you can look at all of these competitors, but none of them can give them the three things we can was an important strategic move. >>>

Bootstrapping with Services from London: Gurman Hundal, CEO of Media IQ (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year was this when you decided to start Media IQ?

Gurman Hundal: We launched in October 2010.

Sramana Mitra: What was the idea? What did you think you were going to do with Media IQ at that time?

Gurman Hundal: When you run online ads, you are actually sitting on a lot of data and learning a lot about your client’s business. Clients were just judging the effectiveness of advertising. If they invested $10,000 into a campaign, do they get an ROI of $100,000 in sales? We were confident we could always deliver results better than the rest of the market. >>>