Bootstrapping by Services from Wisconsin: SignalWire CEO Anthony Minessale (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you switched from that open-source based services company to a product company. That product company is SignalWire?

Anthony Minessale: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Did you build SignalWire entirely by bootstrapping with services or did you raise money?

Scaling to a $700M Exit: Zain Jaffer, CEO of Vungle (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What happened to the $200,000 worth of pre-orders? Were you able to fulfill it?

Zain Jaffer: No. We knew that there was a demand, but we underestimated how long it would take to build the product out. We weren’t able to do anything with that. Customers were asking when this was going to be built. There was a lot of pressure.

Bootstrapping by Services from Wisconsin: SignalWire CEO Anthony Minessale (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a bit about how you built the company. You started in 2002. How did you get your first customers? How did you acquire them? Where did you focus? What was the positioning? 

Anthony Minessale: When we worked on the open source project, our primary focus was providing functionality to the missing piece. Open source is not a distinction in that early stages between end user and a customer.

Scaling to a $700M Exit: Zain Jaffer, CEO of Vungle (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happened with Gokul?

Zain Jaffer: Gokul became a very pivotal figure. When we got into Angel Pad, a lot of people didn’t believe in our idea. It was very disheartening. There must have been at least 10 different advisors who came in and said, “This is never going to work.”

Gokul was the only one who sat down with us and encouraged us to keep on going. Gokul said, “If you’re passionate about this, you can do it.” That meant a lot because Gokul was the industry expert in advertising. His opinion meant more to us.

Bootstrapping by Services from Wisconsin: SignalWire CEO Anthony Minessale (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year is this happening?

Anthony Minessale: 2002.

Sramana Mitra: What was the competitive landscape like? Were RingCentral and Grasshopper around?

Anthony Minessale: It was right before that. We were alone in the wild when we were doing this.

Scaling to a $700M Exit: Zain Jaffer, CEO of Vungle (Part 3)

Zain Jaffer: Just to set the context, Vungle was recently acquired by a private equity group called Blackstone for $780 million all cash. The transactions closed towards the end of 2019.

At that point, we started a company called Vungle and were producing video ads. We didn’t know what to do with these video ads. We were charging $500 to $600 per video ad. It’s basically an agency.

Bootstrapping by Services from Wisconsin: SignalWire CEO Anthony Minessale (Part 1)

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

Anthony is building a very interesting programmable communication platform company that has its roots in Wisconsin.

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?

Scaling to a $700M Exit: Zain Jaffer, CEO of Vungle (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Zain Jaffer: That was 2006. I had been highly obsessed with internet startups for the last five years. It’s time for me to really enjoy myself and be a student and not get involved in anything. I needed a bit of a break.

The first few nights, I organized a party. There were too many people in the living room. Let me take these people to a nightclub and take commission. Before you knew it, I was running a party promotion company. I started doing that.