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Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did you start with? Were you bootstrapping the company?

Sunny Singh: Yes, I took about 18 to 20 credit cards. That was seed money for Edifecs. I had no concept of VCs. I was not business savvy. That was how Edifecs got started. I’ve never run a business before.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you go on in this solo entrepreneur working out of the apartment?

Sunny Singh: In about two years, we moved into our first office, which was an old motel-turned office by a stingy, frugal landlord who had sheep in the back. Interestingly, the first night we moved in there, there was no security. I was so scared. I slept in the office at night. We hired a team of about six or seven people who were doing sales and some development. >>>

Building a Marketing Software Company from Utah: Convirza CEO Jason Wells (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: $3 million was raised from whom?

Jason Wells: They are a private investment group out of New York. They’re not a traditional venture capital firm. They’re more of a Warren Buffet type of an organization, which makes about one or two investments a year in public companies. They didn’t have a portfolio for us. This was really individual money plus a little fund that they put together. They would always tell us, “We don’t really make these kinds of investments, but we like what you’re doing. We like you guys. We’re not going to give you a lot of advice because we really don’t know your space but we think you have a great concept.”

When we did our funding press release, they asked us not mention them. They said, “We do not have a website. We do not want people soliciting investments from us. We make these choices.” We’ve kept that private at their request.

Sramana Mitra: What happens after the $3 million raise and you have a hypothesis that you were going to be execute on? It sounds like that became the business. Tell me more of the milestones of what happened after that. >>>

Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Vacasa Co-Founder Cliff Johnson (Part 1)

Vacasa has bootstrapped to scale in the crowded vacation rental space. Read how!

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

Cliff Johnson: I actually have a fairly unique background, at least for the US anyway. I was born in New Jersey. I’ve lived there until about I was 12 and then moved to a small farm town in Missouri where we had an 80-acre farm. I learned a lot of different skills out there. That was my initial upbringing. My dad is a welder pipefitter.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you go to college?

Cliff Johnson: There’s this small school in Missouri called Drury University. It’s a small school in Springfield, Missouri.

Sramana Mitra: What did you study? >>>

Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to when you finished your Microsoft gig?

Sunny Singh: 1996.

Sramana Mitra: The Internet is now in full swing and you wanted to be an entrepreneur. Within that year that you worked at Microsoft, you figured out what it was that you were going to do your company around? What was that?

Sunny Singh: I was fascinated. I thought what if I could transfer technology to India. That could be very interesting because I could help a lot of companies go from US to India. I did my market analysis. I didn’t like it. I ran a number of ideas back and forth and said, “My background is in integration, supply chain, and software. These are areas that I enjoy but not necessarily the most passionate about.” I had very strong opinions in that area. I always want to learn and figure things out. I want to listen to people and figure out what could be wrong. That’s what led to the genesis of Edifecs. >>>

Building a Marketing Software Company from Utah: Convirza CEO Jason Wells (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What were the levers for scaling this? What strategy did you take to scale this business?

Jason Wells: Strategy number one was to change the business from a professional services business into a software business. There was some back-end technology and some software that was built to help them do these things, but the clients didn’t pay for any of that. They just paid a certain amount an hour for the services. The first piece was to create a software and a SaaS model. What’s interesting is you would take the client that would be paying more for the professional services and you would teach them to handle those human services on their own. They would have all the software to track their advertising and attribution and do the analytics on it. We built this prototype and essentially, used these existing customers as a test for this. >>>

Bootstrap the First Venture, Raise Money for the Second: cVidya CEO Alon Aginsky (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think your point is also that there are different kinds of employees. There are certain people who are startup type of employees.

Alon Aginsky: Right. You have to be very precise about the people you hire. Most of the people that are in cVidya are veterans. Those are the people who join you for the long run. People that come for you to see if they can make a quick exit are not the right people for startups.

Sramana Mitra: The problem unfortunately is that in Silicon Valley right now, the market is full of these kinds of people who are looking for these quick exits. It’s mercenaries versus missionaries as we call them. In a talent war market where it’s very difficult to hire and be selective, you take what you get. It compromises the culture of the company. Where have you been doing all your team building? >>>

Bootstrapping to $100 Million: Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh (Part 1)

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

Sunny has built a very interesting healthcare IT company, overcoming serious challenges. Inspiring story of a bootstrapped success.

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?

Sunny Singh: Give or take, I’ve spent half my life in the US and half my life in India. I grew up in India and finished my undergraduate studies there. Then, I came to the US at the age of 23 to do a couple of Master’s programs. I did three jobs and then started Edifecs in 1996.

Going back to my roots in India, I come from a middle-class family. My father was an international ski hockey player. He played for the Indian team. That was his passion in life. My mother was a homemaker. She focused her life on the kids and our education and making sure that we got everything we needed. >>>

Building a Marketing Software Company from Utah: Convirza CEO Jason Wells (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens after Sony?

Jason Wells: That leads me to where we are today – Convirza and a few other company names in between that process. My brother-in-law Jeremiah Wilson started a company back in 2001 called Contact Point. He was the typical entrepreneur. He just went ahead and did it. He started a professional services company that recorded phone calls and provided sales training and coaching. We were talking one day in my office about business. An entrepreneur is always asking questions and just trying to learn and understand the business economics. He had this problem of being able to grow the business beyond a certain point. Having spent time in the telecom and the mobile marketing space, I was very intrigued. We talked through some ideas on how he might automate things like listening to calls or providing coaching.  >>>