Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Canada: Fusebill CEO Tyler Eyamie (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to launch this product?

Tyler Eyamie: I have a champagne bottle cork in my office that says 11/11/11. It was November 11, 2011, when our first viable product went into the market. That was a humbling experience.

We put it out very quickly thinking about the fundamentals that Steve Blank preaches about the minimal viable product. We were fortunate enough to get our first paying customer early in December of 2011 that year.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Canada: Fusebill CEO Tyler Eyamie (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Can you double click down on the ecosystem and the competitors, because at this point, there were other billing software products in the market. I know this market well.

What products did you look at and what did you consider as competition? What was the competitive position with which your thesis was to go into this market? 

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Canada: Fusebill CEO Tyler Eyamie (Part 2)

Tyler Eyamie: I had an entrepreneurial hunger to go out and try to build a business on my own. One of the things that I had as an advantage over most entrepreneurs was that I could potentially go for several years with no salary.

The other thing that I had was access to tremendous talented people who had helped Protus grow and get acquired. They were also trying to figure out what to do next. I had years of trust and experience working with these people.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Canada: Fusebill CEO Tyler Eyamie (Part 1)

Wonderful story of a SaaS company that has invested $10M to get to $10M ARR over 9 years. Lots of options ahead to exit profitably or to keep going.

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

Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How big were they?

Diego Gomes: They were around $10 million a year.

Sramana Mitra: What level were you at last year?

Diego Gomes: Around $12 million. 

Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Why did Matt join your company?

Diego Gomes: We were growing and delivering good results with marketing our products. Our product was evolving and was generating leads, but we were struggling with learning sales. Our founders and the whole team was not familiar in that area.

Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The first year revenue was $800,000, and then how did that grow?

Diego Gomes: It started at $800,000, then it grew to $1.3 million to $2 million to $8 million. I would say between the year we grew our revenues from $2 million to $8 million was when we accelerated the most. We also started targeting outside of Brazil at that time. 

Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about your first client that was in the model that you found to be a possible success model. Who was that client? What were the circumstances? What did you do for that client? How did you get to the product-market fit?