Entrepreneurship in Heavy-Duty Technology: Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz (Part 1)

I always love to cover entrepreneurs who push the envelope on high horsepower technology. Digital Asset has. Fascinating story!

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?

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Houston: Onit CEO Eric Elfman (Part 3)

Eric Elfman: There was a pretty rich population of angels that if you had the patience and time, you could touch. 

Sramana Mitra: Were these Houston angels?

Eric Elfman: The majority were, but we eventually stretched out to Louisiana, a little bit in California, and even in the UK. It started with people in Houston. They had friends that wanted to get in on it, so it got wider.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Houston: Onit CEO Eric Elfman (Part 2)

Eric Elfman: The data search idea was to remove the paper invoice system and switch to electronic invoices directly from the law firms and run them against the rules and validate them. The result of that was a 5% to 10% savings on the money they were spending with the law firms just by enforcing guidelines that were already set.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Houston: Onit CEO Eric Elfman (Part 1)

Eric has built two sizable companies in legal tech from Houston. Great journey!

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 Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2019? How much did you do?

Jake Weaver: That was the $5 million year. That was the breakout from where we had been before. For anybody that talks about valuations, a professional services firm is not valued as a product company. Even though revenue was staying the same, the value was increasing.

Bootstrapping with Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Just so you know, we have a whole methodology in our program around Bootstrapping Using Services. It’s something that we do a lot of in the program.

It’s something we have numerous case studies on. We have encountered what you’re talking about several times before. It works. I think you will go on to tell us that it will work.

Bootstrapping with Services: Codesigned CEO Jake Weaver (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the productization? What was the revenue level as a services company before you started productization?

Jake Weaver: As a services company, we had just over $4 million in revenue when the change started to happen. We had stepped into the product market, but we had made a smaller business solution.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Canada: Fusebill CEO Tyler Eyamie (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: If you can finance this with bank credit lines and you don’t need a lot of equity financing, why would you dilute yourself?

You now have a company that is at $10 million ARR and this company is reasonably conservatively financed. You’ve put in about $10 million in investment to get to $10 million ARR, which means that if you were to sell this company to a larger player, you would get a very nice return on investment because it’s not an exorbitantly capitalized company.