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Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the first year that you were actually selling this product? Was it 2007?

Andrew Filev: Yes. If I remember correctly, we launched the product in June 2007. We had a 30-day trial. The first payment came in 30 days later.

Sramana Mitra: At the end of 2007, how many customers did you have? What did you learn about the business model and the pricing model? What was resonating with your customers?

Andrew Filev: I honestly do not remember. We’ve developed 10,000 paying organizations right now and we’re growing exponentially. This last year, we actually did 2.5x. I don’t remember the exact numbers off the hat. >>>

Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let me actually probe each of those points a bit. Did you, at this point, become an e-commerce site? Were people ordering online?

Belisario Rosas: No. We barely, to this date, do any type of e-commerce. All of it is solution-based and face-to-face selling.

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about solution service infrastructure that you put in place that allowed you to do that level of business in the 1998 time frame.

Belisario Rosas: It was more of adding value to the products we were selling. At that time, we were one of the only few that could power-convert products. We specialize in foreign voltage computer parts. We set up a testing facility so that we were able to test and convert certain products to run under 220 V, which was European power. We specialized in that. There were only three or four capable facilities in the US >>>

Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How much are we talking? What kind of capital base did you start with?

Peter Lehrman: About a million.

Sramana Mitra: How did you bring this two-sided marketplace together? There’s always a chicken and egg in marketplaces. What was your strategy to bridge that?

Peter Lehrman: We built two products and launched them essentially at the same time. The two products were a tool for sellers and buyers of companies to articulate the profile of companies that they were looking to buy. We built two sides of the network concurrently from a product perspective and released them concurrently to the two markets. We picked very specific markets on the sell side. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What state was Wrike at when you came to Silicon Valley? Did you have something? Did you have an MVP that you started to work on?

Andrew Filev: It was a very early prototype. I think we launched a beta version at a conference in Paris. Then right after that, I moved to the Valley. The first official launch happened when I was already in the Valley at a conference called Silicon Valley launch. There are many more conferences these days but I vividly remember those early days. That was around 2007.

Sramana Mitra: What happened after the launch? I assume that you are using the proceeds from your consulting company to get the Wrike product off the ground?

Andrew Filev: We self-funded it first. Then we bootstrapped it. Then we got venture fund. By the time we got to our first investment, we already had thousands of paying customers. When we started, I always focused on customers first. >>>

Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You were doing, more or less, the same thing that the company you were working for was doing?

Belisario Rosas: Yes, very much. We just continued accepting clients that we were dealing with or looking for new clients.

Sramana Mitra: How did that ramp?

Belisario Rosas: Like I said earlier, we started with a large debt because we had just done a large trip in Europe visiting customers with several orders. We had about $300 in the bank and we just bought and sold parts on a day to day basis.

Sramana Mitra: How much revenue did you generate at the end of the first year?

Belisario Rosas: $250,000 from July 1989 to December. >>>

Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In the event that you’re using equity as a financial instrument, is the expectation exit or do you also do dividend style financing?

Peter Lehrman: We don’t do any of it. We’re the platform that connects the entrepreneurs with the investors. Those decisions are determined by the investors in partnership with the entrepreneurs that they back.

Sramana Mitra: If you were to look at that 30% of equity deals that happen on your platform, what percentage of those are exit expectation versus dividend expectation?

Peter Lehrman: We don’t track that specifically. The majority of companies on Axial are profitable so they have the ability to pay dividends but we don’t track the dividend data that comes from those companies. We’re just not part of those conversations. I think, in a lot of cases, those >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do this a bit chronologically. You finished college in what year?

Andrew Filev: A little bit more than a decade ago, I think.

Sramana Mitra: The Internet was in full swing in 2005. You were still in Russia at this point?

Andrew Filev: Yes, I was still in Russia. I was eager to move. I was passionate about moving to Silicon Valley since my teenage years, long before I started my own company. I actually delayed it because I couldn’t’ just leave the company in its infancy. I’m not the kind of guy who drops things midway. The fact that I had a company delayed it a little bit, but since my teenage years, I was passionate about moving to the Valley.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you move?

Andrew Filev: I moved around 2006. >>>

Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 1)

We hear a lot from Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. We hear some from Europeans. But thus far, not as much from Latin American entrepreneurs. Belisario Rosas is Peruvian, and is also interested in fostering further entrepreneurship in Latin America.

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

Belisario Rosas: I was born in Lima, Peru.

Sramana Mitra: Did you grow up in Lima?

Belisario Rosas: Yes, I did. I went through elementary, middle school, and high school in Lima. When I left, I wanted to study Medicine. So I went to McGill University in Montreal, Canada to study Medicine. In the second year, I felt that it wasn’t my call. I had a liking >>>