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?

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.