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Bootstrapping Using Services From Houston: Identity Automation CEO James Litton (Part 1)

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

James has built an identity management software company from Houston and now wants to go upmarket.

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 circumstances?

James Litton: I am a native Houstonian. I’m a rare breed. I was born and raised in Houston. In terms of circumstances, I think I’m your quintessential American middle-class family.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do for schooling?

James Litton: Of course, once I got through my primary and secondary education, I took a number of college courses, but I’m a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks. I entered into the workforce fairly early when I was about 19. I was working on, what ultimately ended up being my path, information technology. I took on a significant interest in information technology from the very early days. >>>

Bootstrapping an IoT Company from North Carolina: Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What does it mean when you say they distribute? Do they distribute your component or do they distribute the fully-integrated solution of these gas cylinders that have self-monitoring and  self-updating capacity?

Bob Witter: When we started, we were only a device provider. We helped them find the resources to build out the solution and that was the backend. They already had some sensor devices that they were using. We helped them find some sources to build their own. At that point in time, we were just supplying devices.

Today, we have moved to a model where we provide the whole ecosystem. We are in discussions with them so they don’t have to worry about things like subscription activations and support. We are giving them the opportunity to make us the scapegoat if something goes wrong. We are trying to go back and talk to some of our customers who, in the past, thought of us as an equipment provider, and pull them into the family for the whole ecosystem. >>>

Bootstrapping an IoT Company from North Carolina: Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When did you hit upon this as a key go-to-market strategy for sourcing projects and being brought into projects?

Bob Witter: It was specific to these vendors. These are the relationships that we started to build in the first couple of years of our operation. We knew a lot of these vendors through our experience in the cellular business. We cold-called on them a lot and asked them if they had opportunities come in to them looking for design teams to build their devices. We hit them up every month and say, “Anything new?”

Sramana Mitra: So very early on, you figured out that these component vendors would be good sources of leads for you in terms of new projects?

Bob Witter: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: What was the ramp of the business? You said you started in 2003. You’ve now been in business for more than 12 years.
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Bootstrapping an IoT Company from North Carolina: Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can we double-click down on what exactly happened in the first  couple of years? It sounds like you started with a hypothesis and that didn’t get any traction in the market. You had to pivot. How did you figure out what to pivot to? What happened? What struck the cord?

Bob Witter: We stuck with our core expertise, which was RF design. We just shifted a little bit. Instead of helping people get their own designs through the certification process, we actually started helping people design. It was just a matter of a lot of cold-calling and actually seeing where it went to a large extent. Where it kept going and where people really wanted help was on the design side.

Sramana Mitra: What kinds of customers were looking for this help?
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Bootstrapping an IoT Company from North Carolina: Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions (Part 1)

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

North Carolina, at one point, had a large concentration of cellular technology companies. Today, some of that talent has come together around IoT.

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 circumstances?

Bob Witter: I was born in Springville, New York. It’s in the western part of New York. I grew up in central New York. I went to school at State University of New York and graduated in 1981 with degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics. I started my career in Rochester with Eastman Kodak company in the medical products division that was brand new at that time. I learned a great deal about how to do medical products that has certainly served me well even today at Device Solutions. >>>

Scaling an Educational Services Business to $50 Million: Todd Zipper, CEO of Learning House (Part 1)

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

The white-labeled education services business is scaling rapidly, and institutions of all sizes are building online programs. Learning House operates in the small, regional college and university segment, and has built a nice business.

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?

Todd Zipper: I was born in New York. I went to University of Pennsylvania for my undergraduate and studied History and Economics. Like many people from Penn in the mid 90s, I made my way to Wall Street – to the Equity Research Department of Solomon Brothers, which eventually became Citi Group. >>>

Bootstrapping an Education Company: Tod Browndorf, CEO of Coggno (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Who pays you?

Tod Browndorf: When we sell a course, we retain a percentage of revenue.

Sramana Mitra: I got it.

Tod Browndorf: Let me go back to the HIPAA example. That was created by a company called Teach Privacy. Teach Privacy is an expert in HIPAA compliance. We had a customer who wanted 900 courses. These courses reside in our system. They bought them through our system and we share revenue with the company that created the course. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: RJ Metrics CEO Robert Moore (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you right now in terms channel, or other strategic pieces that enable you to grow? How do you acquire customer? Is it a direct channel? Is it an online channel?

Robert Moore: We have two main channels through which we acquire customers. One of them is inbound marketing and one of them is outbound sales. On the inbound marketing side, we made a really big effort from day one to be a thought leader in the space of data analysis, business intelligence, and e-commerce. We published very frequently everything from blog posts to white papers, to industry benchmark reports. We hold webinars every couple of weeks. We’re very prolific on the content side when it comes to providing people operating businesses with advise on how to use their data to make smarter decisions.

That content ecosystem is a really helpful source of leads for us because people become aware of us and then they say, “What’s this RJMetrics?” They click through and raise their hands to try the product out. We have a free trial as part of our on-boarding process. Because there’s a very low amount of risk, we’re able to get a lot of people in on the free trial on a monthly basis. As long as we convert a good amount of them, it works well. >>>