Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: They replaced you as the CEO.

Sadek Ali: They tried to. I was the Founder and CTO. My business partner was the CEO. They hired a CEO.

Sramana Mitra: The business got replaced by their CEO.

Sadek Ali: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: That didn’t go well.

Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens when COVID strikes?

Nick Carter: Everything in our company is measured on week-over-week sales. I can remember my co-founder texting me one Sunday afternoon saying, “We had a nice week today.” The sales volume grew 600% in one week. It’s because everybody had to stay home. They needed delivery. The traditional supply chain could not keep up with the demand.

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You joined that other company, but you kept the software services that was going in parallel.

Sadek Ali: Correct. Then we ended the business when I went to New York. From there, I came home because I felt that I had enough experience to do my own raise with my own ideas. In this next company, I was doing crypto and all that stuff. I learned how to do a raise and had my biggest failure at that point. It was then that I finished my PhD.

Sramana Mitra: What didn’t work in crypto?

Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: From your network, how big of a consumer base were you able to pull together?

Nick Carter: We got to about 70 to 80 orders a week, which is $2,500 to $3,000 in sales. It was enough of a critical mass.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it stay in just Indianapolis?

Nick Carter: The first year.

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You started doing programming work for this one company. What happens after that?

Sadek Ali: Once I had gotten that particular gig, the actual relationship lasted about two years. It happened to be with OpenText. This is where I got immersed with search technologies. I fell in love with them at that time. My brother and I took a look at how to deal with large data intractable problems. We looked at image processing and environmental systems. That led me into doing my Masters.

Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

Nick Carter: About 2013 is when I started working on food and agriculture.

Sramana Mitra: What were you doing?

Nick Carter: I started a food manufacturing business. Eventually, I realized that I needed to use my tech entrepreneurship skills to focus on the local food scene. I built technology to power an online farmer’s market. It’s a two-sided marketplace called Market Wagon.

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 1)

Sadek has built an e-commerce platform company for the mid-market within the Microsoft ecosystem. Read on to learn more.

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?

Sadek Ali: I was born in Canada. I grew up there. Most of my adult life has been spent here.

Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon (Part 1)

Nick tells a wonderful story of building Market Wagon into a thriving marketplace. Covid has been an immense force multiplier for the venture.

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?