Bootstrapping a Virtual Company to $10 Million from Atlanta: Field Pros Direct CEO Matt Anderson (Part 1)

We’re big fans of bootstrapping, virtual companies, and domain knowledge. Matt’s story has all those ingredients.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and Scaling in Coimbatore: Kovai CEO Saravana Kumar (Part 1)

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

I love doing stories of entrepreneurs who are long-time readers of the 1Mby1M blog. Saravana is one. A wonderful story of how this entrepreneur is scaling a SaaS company from Coimbatore!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Building an Analytics Company to $10M+ in Revenue: Mode Analytics CEO Derek Steer (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What use cases did you find the most success in? Were there dominant use cases? 

Derek Steer: Mode is a horizontal platform for analysis and so we are useful for whatever an analyst or data scientist wants to do with Mode. We get used for all kinds of stuff, for all kinds of companies of different sizes around the world.

Building an Analytics Company to $10M+ in Revenue: Mode Analytics CEO Derek Steer (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Derek Steer: When you raise money from a venture firm, you show them an optimistic projection of the business and then you are expected to hit it.

I remember the key moments clearly but the day-to-day memory of May 2015 is lost. If I sum it up into what happens next, I would say financing is a natural place in which founders tend to reflect on what is happening in the business and the leadership teams. You had to step back and look at everything holistically during a fund raise.

Building an Analytics Company to $10M+ in Revenue: Mode Analytics CEO Derek Steer (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn about pricing? What were people willing to pay and how were people willing to pay for your product? What signals were emerging?

Derek Steer: The biggest challenge we had was when people looked at Mode at first. We made this product that targets analysts and data scientists as the core user but part of what made us successful is that their workflow involved sharing.

Building an Analytics Company to $10M+ in Revenue: Mode Analytics CEO Derek Steer (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The methodology that we follow is, bootstrap first to raise money later. Get to validation and then raise money, partly because this option of raising money remains only if you can raise friends and family money somehow.

For the numbers that we work with, most people don’t have those options. That’s why, pragmatically, it’s not very doable for most people. We are in 2013. How much money did you raise from your Yammer bosses?

Building an Analytics Company to $10M+ in Revenue: Mode Analytics CEO Derek Steer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning. How did you start? What was the first product? What customer did you go after? Talk about your entrepreneur journey.

Derek Steer: The first thing we did was our first mistake. We knew what the product should look like for companies to use themselves. We had a good understanding of the toolset or workbench for the day-to-day data analyst or scientist.

Building an Analytics Company to $10M+ in Revenue: Mode Analytics CEO Derek Steer (Part 2)

Derek Steer: I worked in the analytics team under Pete who was an absolutely fantastic leader. He taught me a lot about businesses, how to operate within businesses, and think analytically about advancing businesses. He also ended up connecting me with the people who I eventually would start Mode with.