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Making Mass Customization Work: Jodie Fox, CEO of Shoes of Prey (Part 1)

Mass customization has been the holy grail of the fashion industry ever since the Internet was born. Jodie Fox discusses why mass customization is so hard, and how her company is scaling a business that offers custom shoes.

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

Jodie Fox: I was born in a small country town in Australia. I was raised by a Sicilian mother and an Australian father. I was the first person in my family to go to university. Both my parents came from very humble backgrounds and worked really hard so that my sister and I could have a good education. It was very challenging to decide what I wanted to study. I was torn between my more artistic side and my more academic side. >>>

Raising Money From 75 Angels: Manmeet Singh, CEO of Dataguise (Part 1)

I have never seen a company raise so much money from so many angels. It is far from standard practice in the industry, but Manmeet did it! Find out how…

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from and where were you raised? Give me the back story of your entrepreneurial journey.

Manmeet Singh: I’m from New Delhi, India. I did my education back in India. In about a year, I came to the US as a programmer for HCL. Since then, I’ve been in the IT field, working for large companies. In 1999, I made a move towards startups. I learned how >>>

Founding Elance, then Webaroo: Beerud Sheth’s Entrepreneurial Journey (Part 1)

Beerud Sheth founded Elance back in 1998. At the time, the concept was new and path breaking. Today, with freelancing becoming a gigantic part of the global workplace, the company is playing a massive role in matching businesses with service providers. You can also read our interview with Fabio Rosati on Elance’s evolution.

Today, Beerud is on his second company, Webaroo, which in turn, is on its second mobile messaging product.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances?
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Bootstrapping Using Services: FullBottle CEO Reed Berglund (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What I see is that the bigger disruption is in looking for systematic ways of being able to compensate influencers.

Reed Berglund: That’s one way of looking at it, absolutely. If you examine the initial goal for these influencers on these platforms, they were free platforms. They went on from a hobby standpoint. In many cases, they wanted to use it to market their own skill set whether that’s music, film, or art, but they didn’t approach it with, “I can actually make some money doing this.” To clear the market, there was definitely a need for a mechanism.

Sramana Mitra: How much money can an influencer, who participates in your campaign, expect to make in your sweet spot?

Reed Berglund: It depends on where that influencer is and the life cycle of their influence, if you will. For folks who have 250,000 to 500,000 followers on a platform, they can make anywhere between $1,000 to $2,000 per campaign. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: FullBottle CEO Reed Berglund (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What did a McDonalds campaign like that yield you in terms of revenue? Are we talking about a $10,000 client or a $200,000 client?

Reed Berglund: That’s more in the neighborhood of a $100,000 client.

Sramana Mitra: Is that your sweet spot? Is that what you’re looking for as you’re building this business?

Reed Berglund: No, our ideal customer profile would be in the middle to smaller market. These are people who certainly do not have the budget of a McDonalds. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: FullBottle CEO Reed Berglund (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Walk me through a use case such that we can understand how the workflow operates here.

Reed Berglund: I’ll walk you through a program that we just did for Universal Music Group. This is a franchise that is about 25 years old. Its success came during the CD era, which was much different than the digital era of music. It’s a lot easier to sell a playlist. There are 53 albums in it and they continue to have some degree of success. They realized that they needed to cater to a consumer who was online and on Twitter and looking for downloads. Their challenge was to get people to download the album. They came to pop music fans on Vine and sourced those through our search engine. The influencers submit a video to be approved by Universal Music. It’s like Tinder. If you like the video, swipe left. If you don’t, swipe right. You then post the videos that you approved. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: FullBottle CEO Reed Berglund (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The company didn’t work out.

Reed Berglund: The company didn’t work out. We were ahead of the market. That’s one of the great lessons in my career. We were also trying to change buying behavior in a highly entrenched industry.

Sramana Mitra: What happened next?

Reed Berglund: We spun out of that company. One of the partners from that company was a global free-to-play gaming company called Miniclip. It was number one at that time. We launched it in the US to handle all of the sales, marketing, and licensing for Miniclip. From 2009 to 2013, I ran all of the monetization for Miniclip in the US. That brings us up to FullBottle, which was launched in June 2013. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: FullBottle CEO Reed Berglund (Part 1)

Continuing with our Bootstrapping Using Services theme, FullBottle is an interesting social media marketing venture that taps into the reach and engagement capacity of influencers to attract customers.

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

Reed Berglund: I was born in Manhattan and then moved to Los Angeles. I grew up in Los Angeles. I have a mixed European background and both my father and mother worked in media.

Sramana Mitra: What about school? Did you do all of it in Los Angeles?
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