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Bootstrapping Using Services: James Kane, CEO of RWS (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was specifically the customer acquisition strategy? Were you calling these people? Were you visiting these people? Was it direct? Was it channel? How did you sell?

James Kane: The primary customer acquisition strategy was in-person sales at trade shows. The appliance retailing industry is cyclical. They have two buying seasons – in the late summer and in the very early spring. Appliance retailers have big buy fairs where they come together at those two times to buy new merchandise for their store and also to evaluate new business services. Almost all of our initial sales were through those kinds of trade events.

Sramana Mitra: How did the business ramp given that strategy? >>>

Bootstrapping to Inflection: Dan Stewart, CEO of Happy Grasshopper (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Your background was in sales training and then construction. Where does CRM come from into this process?

Dan Stewart: Maybe we should go back a little bit further. We all have our gifts and talents. I’ve always been fascinated with learning. I have a very diverse set of interests. Whenever a subject interests me, I obsess about it until I’ve learned as much as I can. My love for computers and technology started in my childhood. I had a Sinclair back in 1981. I was an early Commodore user. I’ve always taken a very active interest in technology trends. When our company had grown to the point where >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: James Kane, CEO of RWS (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: After two years of piloting, it brings us to 2003. What happens next?

James Kane: I decided that I had to get back to what my avocation in life was, which was the design and creation of software. I made the decision to sunset flying and to begin the search for a new concept to build a software company around.

Sramana Mitra: What form did that take? What was that new software company going to be?

James Kane: I didn’t have a vision. I needed to find a validated concept to build my company around. What I did is, I assembled a very small group of two or three developers. We went out and worked as consultants. In particular, we were looking for failed software projects. >>>

Bootstrapping to Inflection: Dan Stewart, CEO of Happy Grasshopper (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When you decided to shut that down, what was the next move?

Dan Stewart: I went to work for one of my yellow pages clients. I became a construction manager of all things. That was a great experience because I got to sell millions of dollars worth of projects. In the process, I learned to manage those projects and become a better business owner. That led to starting my geotechnical contracting company which kept me busy for a long time. That’s where we won all the Inc magazine awards.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Dan Stewart: We incorporated in 2000. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: James Kane, CEO of RWS (Part 1)

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

We’re big believers in Bootstrapping Using Services, as you know. Here’s yet another story of an entrepreneur who has scaled to over $10 million in revenue using the method.

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?

James Kane: I grew up in a very small town in far northern New York. It’s a college town of about 2,000 people. My father was a university professor. He taught Mechanical Engineering at Clarkson University. >>>

Bootstrapping to Inflection: Dan Stewart, CEO of Happy Grasshopper (Part 1)

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

Dan Stewart is a 1M1M entrepreneur. Read how he has navigated his way to an inflection point that has brought him to the cusp of 4x growth in 2017.

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?

Dan Stewart: My family moved around quite a lot as I was growing up. I rarely stayed in a school for more than a year. That took me from West Virginia and Chicago, down to Florida. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Help me understand with a use case. Let’s say Uber wants to go global using your technology, what specifically happens? How does the technology help Uber go global?

Moshe Vaknin: Let’s say Uber goes to India. Then they’d say, “I’d like to have 300,000 users in the next six months.” With our technology and our inventory in India, we can predict and tell Uber, “Yes, we can deliver 300,000 users but you have to pay us $2 per install. That’s the price that makes sense to drive us the right inventory so we can analyze and drive your 300,000 users.” We do this kind of setting up of expectations.

Once you set up expectations, we start to deploy all the messaging that Uber wants. Our recommendation engine and predictive algorithms will recommend >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 5)

Moshe Vaknin: In the beginning of 2013, we did a shift. We decided that we wanted to focus on B2B. We didn’t change the core but rather than having an app, we said, “Let’s get to publishers who have a lot of users. Through their content, we’ll recommend to users.” Earlier, the dream was to build my own channel of inventory. That’s not a sustainable concept.

Sramana Mitra: It’s very expensive to build that kind of audience.

Moshe Vaknin: Expensive, and there’s no stickiness. Facebook has done a good job but with just discovering apps, it’s not enough. It was a pretty good shift. It was not easy because not enough data was available. We had to make the technology much more sophisticated to be able to make the recommendations to the users. When you promote an app, the ROI is very challenging. >>>