Bootstrap First with Services from London, Raise Money Later: Rich Waldron, CEO of Tray.io (Part 1)

Rich is building an authentic tech company from London and while the company could have become a so-called Unicorn by loading up on liquidation preferences, they have chosen not to do so. Excellent story.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later to $120M from Colorado: Madwire CEO JB Kellogg (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you continue in this services mode?

JB Kellogg: From 2009 to 2012.

Sramana Mitra: What revenue level did you reach in this mode?

JB Kellogg: I think that in 2012, our revenue was somewhere around $5 million. 

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later to $120M from Colorado: Madwire CEO JB Kellogg (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How did you acquire customers for your digital marketing?

JB Kellogg: We always say that we eat our own dog food. Everything that we do for ourselves is what we sell to our customers. We started doing digital marketing for ourselves which generated leads. We would call those leads and open those accounts. It’s a recurring revenue business.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later to $120M from Colorado: Madwire CEO JB Kellogg (Part 1)

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

This story discusses all sorts of interesting nuances, including DIFM vs. DIY. Read on.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking from Romania: 123FormBuilder CEO Florin Cornianu (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your business is coming from these app marketplaces?

Florin Cornianu: A big part right now depends on partners.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage?

Florin Cornianu: Half.

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking from Romania: 123FormBuilder CEO Florin Cornianu (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You said it took you two years to get to $60,000 annual revenue. That’s 2010 then, right?

Florin Cornianu: It took us all the way to 2014 to get to a million dollars in revenue. 

Sramana Mitra: Besides Google SEO for customer acquisition, was there anything else that you did for customer acquisition?

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking from Romania: 123FormBuilder CEO Florin Cornianu (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the product that you got together?

Florin Cornianu: It was a very small script that allowed you to build a contact form and put it on your website. Back then, there wasn’t any Google Forms.

We thought about automating the creation of contact forms. It turned out to be a product. Instead of selling the script, we decided to sell it as a subscription. We did it on a freemium model.

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking from Romania: 123FormBuilder CEO Florin Cornianu (Part 1)

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

You may have been reading our PaaS coverage, as well as Bootstrapping by Piggybacking posts.

Well, Florin has built a $6M SaaS business using this methodology with just $1M in funding. What’s more, he has done it entirely from Romania and sells to largely a US customer base.

Excellent story!