Bootstrapping First from Colorado, Then Scaling with VC Funds: Faction CEO Luke Norris (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Where were you based while you were doing all this?

Luke Norris: I was still in Denver. At that time, I was working a lot in New York. I didn’t have a permanent place out there, but I was there several weeks a month.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next and what year are we going to go to next?

Bootstrapping First from Colorado, Then Scaling with VC Funds: Faction CEO Luke Norris (Part 1)

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

Luke has executed a tremendously effective Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later strategy with Faction.

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?

Luke Norris: I was born in Nevada. 

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Jeff Wilkins, CEO of Motili (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Did the pricing change when you made this switch to providing these insights?

Jeff Wilkins: Somewhat. We’ve always underpriced our services and probably devalued some of the things that we do. We definitely left some money on the table. Over time, we’ve been trying to rationalize that more. Maybe if we can help them spend the money better, we don’t have to be cheaper at all. Maybe you don’t need three S’s; maybe you just need one S. At the moment, we’re still offering those three components.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Jeff Wilkins, CEO of Motili (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to hit a million in revenue?

Jeff Wilkins: Two months.

Sramana Mitra: What sized contracts were you doing?

Jeff Wilkins: We started as a reactive company. A client or one of their tenants had a problem with one of their HVAC units. In the early days, they’d call or email us, and we would dispatch a contractor.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Jeff Wilkins, CEO of Motili (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get to the genesis of Motili. What were you thinking? Why did you start this company? What did you want to do with it?

Jeff Wilkins: I was selling another company. There was a product registration business that I had called Interaxis here in Denver. Our clients were consumer durable manufacturers like Whirlpool, LG, and Samsung.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Jeff Wilkins, CEO of Motili (Part 4)

Jeff Wilkins: It was fascinating to see that one virtue of being lean was that you’re going out. In some cases, we’ve even got companies that had such a pain point to pay us for creating a solution.

The challenge is, you need to be able to retain enough rights to the IP so you can market more broadly. That can be a very good way of making sure that you’re working on a problem that really matters to a customer. There are nice to have. That’s not the same as writing you a check.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Jeff Wilkins, CEO of Motili (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was Sift a funded company or a bootstrapped company?

Jeff Wilkins: It was a funded company but by angel investors only. We had a pretty modest round. I think we raised less than $1.5 million for the business. We have investors like Eric Smith, Michael Harrison, and some of the Justice League of America in tech. 

We didn’t go the formal VC route. We were growing and profitable and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. 24/7 was similar to DoubleClick.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Jeff Wilkins, CEO of Motili (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How many years did you stay at Sun and what happens next?

Jeff Wilkins: I spent three and a half years at Sun. I got a call from a colleague who had been working on creating a new medical instrument. It was pretty much serendipitous. He essentially said, “I’ve got this idea for a product. I need help on the business side. Can you come?” I went down and ran this company, EyeSys Technologies, for two years.