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?

Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Did you launch as a software company or as a marketplace? 

Diego Gomes: I launched it as a software company. The first year was very challenging. Although we were having a little bit of success in selling to customers, the problem was that they were buying a content marketing platform, but they weren’t creating enough content.

Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 1)

Diego has built a terrific content marketing company from Brazil. He bootstrapped first, raised money later, and has recently acquired a sizable US company to scale. Excellent story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Tell me about your background. Where are you from? Where were you raised?

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the COVID Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You didn’t raise any financing? Is all this based on your personal investment in the advertising?

Ammar Amdani: Yes. 

Sramana Mitra: What is the customer acquisition cost? Could you talk about how much you are putting into advertising? What kind of equation have you been able to achieve?

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the COVID Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How are you acquiring customers?

Ammar Amdani: I can tell you about our brand strategy and how we differentiate ourselves from hundreds of competitors. On the outside, it seems like an overcrowded space because a lot of people are targeting the space.

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the Covid Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 1)

This is a superb story of COVID-era entrepreneurship. Uplifting and thrilling!

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?

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The organic pull really drives the business? 

Mareza Larizadeh: The great majority of our active subscribers have joined organically. They have either heard about us or their friends have invited them to join the platform.

Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue land? It was bootstrapped mode going from 2012 when you started this?

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the kind of experiences and the kind of people who started gravitating towards your platform, making this a financially viable business. 

Mareza Larizadeh: We started partnering with mom-and-pop shops to drive customers their way. We would structure offers. A dinner offer or a brunch offer for example, which we would then sell on our platform with an added perk which generally was a discount for the price.