Genesis to Acquisition: Mike Morris, CEO of Topcoder (Part 1)

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

Mike founded Topcoder, then left and joined Appirio. Appirio acquired Topcoder. Wipro then acquired both Appirio and Topcoder. Very interesting storyline.

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?

Mike Morris: I was born in a town outside of Boston and grew up in a fairly large family. I’m the youngest of seven and went to Catholic schools for the majority of my life. I went to Boston College High School and I continued on into Boston College. I played sports >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What else is tricky that is worth discussing that people can learn from?

Jason VandeBoom: I think it’s really trying to find that optimal speed of growing. Just in the last 12 months alone, a lot of people can look at our company and say, “Why don’t you triple the sales team?” I think an organization can only grow as fast as it can grow. There’s also this natural cadence that you can grow by.

Sramana Mitra: You’re based in Chicago? The entire operation is based in Chicago? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: This $20 million that you brought in, did you deploy it into operations or did the founders take liquidity from that investment?

Jason VandeBoom: It’s mostly just there for making the right decisions. We haven’t really deployed it. It was never our intent to push that to sales and marketing, which is the classic idea.

Sramana Mitra: But it wasn’t also deployed as buying some of the founder shares? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the next inflection point?

Jason VandeBoom: Right as we were getting comfortable with SaaS, we were still very much similar to being a contact list management tool. We quickly realized that we don’t want to be an email marketing company. It didn’t follow any of our beliefs. It didn’t even follow a lot of the functionality in our product.

We were more about sending fewer messages at the right time and using intelligence to drive all that. There was a disconnect between branding ourselves as an email marketing company and what we truly thought we were. We decided to change again and >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you tackle that change?

Jason VandeBoom: We made the decision to make the switch. This was a big change, but we did it very slowly.

Sramana Mitra: When was this?

Jason VandeBoom: Around 2012. We started offering this recurring option and we just put it in the background and then we started to slowly surface it for our existing customer base. It was really important to me that we don’t damage our brand during this process. I was committed, for years in the future, to supporting the customers and ensuring that they’re still able to run with >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This is an entrepreneur’s journey that we are trying to capture. When you started, what did you start with?

Jason VandeBoom: I started with the bare bones of just communicating with customers. Think of a system that brings in customer names and email addresses and you can send a campaign to them. I got that out there and then a couple of people started buying it, which was surprising. Using that customer feedback, I was able to iterate and add on different features and different functionalities. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $40 Million: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom (Part 1)

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

Jason has built a disciplined, profitable business and scaled it to $40 million in 2017 revenue. The company was first bootstrapped using services, and later raised ~$20 million in funding.

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?

Jason VandeBoom: I was born and raised in a small town in Wisconsin about an hour out of Milwaukee, and started in >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Ranker CEO Clark Benson (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Where to from here? You are profitable already. Is this a company that now stops raising money and goes to some sort of exit in the near term?

Clark Benson: That’s a great question. We don’t have to raise money which is a great position to be in. I’m terrible at raising money, and I don’t like doing it. We turned profitable about 18 months ago. I’ve been so much more relaxed. I’m only working 55 hours a week now. We had occasional conversations with strategic partners who are interested in the data.

We may raise money only if there’s a strategic partner that will help us grow that side of the business a lot quicker. Obviously, I >>>