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Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In the chronology, where are we in now?

Taylor Tyng: I’m going back and forth within that. We’re probably around the mid-2000s.

Sramana Mitra: What is the next major strategic move and what year?

Taylor Tyng: As I mentioned, we’ve never been venture-backed. We ran two businesses side by side — the design agency and the software business. We reached the critical mass around 2008. We were at a place of profitability with our software business, so the next major move was to close our design agency, which was a rather well-renowned and profitable business and focus on Wiredrive. At that time, we also started looking at how we were to >>>

Building a Cutting-Edge Telecollaboration Company: John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You did a PhD as well at MIT?

John Underkoffler: I did. I stuck it through.

Sramana Mitra: What was your PhD in?

John Underkoffler: My PhD was in a set of systems called the IO bulb and luminous room. The intent was to show, through prototypes, what would happen if we abandon the old keyboard and mouse paradigm for UI. By that time, the GUI and the keyboard and mouse that supported it were 15 years old. It seemed to be that we can, usefully and valuably, move past that. Inventing and using a radically more capable UI will let people do new kinds of things entirely. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of customers were adopting video advertising at that time? Who were these early adopters of video?

Taylor Tyng: A lot of them were post-production companies and commercial production companies. In particular, post-production companies were very interesting early adopters for us. They’re built around pipeline workflows for technologies so they understood the investments and how asset management systems are critical to what they do. They saw the value in us for a few reasons. One is they were trying to send videos to their customers for review and approval.

They were also trying to archive everything that they’ve done and put it into a context so that they could use it for their own marketing promotion or sales purposes. We fell into two primary workflows for them. One was servicing 11th-hour creatives – things that need to be seen and approved immediately. The >>>

Building a Cutting-Edge Telecollaboration Company: John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries (Part 1)

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

John worked on Minority Report after finishing his PhD at the MIT Media Lab. Read on how he parlayed that experience into a supercool company that is scaling nicely, while reinventing collaboration.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Where were you born, raised and in what kind of background?

John Underkoffler: I was born in a hospital in Philadelphia but from the time I was a few months old until I left for college, I lived in a very small town in Southeastern Pennsylvania. My parents had bought a farm. I grew up in a non-working farm, but it was populated with lots and lots of creatures and that kind of proximity to nature had a big effect on my design practice in later years. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 1)

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

Taylor has bootstrapped Wiredrive over a 17-year period to about $10 million. Today, he has options ahead to grow organically or raise money. Either way, an interesting journey.

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

Taylor Tyng: I was born south of Boston, Massachusetts in a town called Duxbury. I was born the son of two entrepreneurs who went through a line of businesses from early plastic mold injection technology companies and ended up working in a luxury travel business. I got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug early. I was raised in a middle class setting and my parents made sure that they raised children who were thoughtful and mindful. I had a real good platform to practice >>>

Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking when you became profitable?

Guy Mucklow: It was four years after we started, so 2005. It’s interesting because it begs the question of going down the VC route or bootstrapping. Increasingly, a lot of tech entrepreneurs that I meet who have taken funding regret doing that. I know you’re in the game, so you see the value of it.

Sramana Mitra: In our program, there is a very clear philosophy that you bootstrap first and raise money later, or not at all.

Guy Mucklow: I think that makes total sense, because I have seen so many startups start with a view of almost a load of mud, throwing it at a wall, and seeing what sticks. They’ve not been very pragmatic. If you’re living off your own capital, you are more careful about it.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s try to accelerate and cover a bit more of the story so that it’s a complete story. What is the next major strategic move or inflection point where your business accelerates and what was the driver? >>>

Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of conversion rates did you experience? Are you willing to discuss that?

Christian Vanek: Sure, we’re an open book. From our website, we have about 1% conversion rate of visitors to trial or free customers. From free customers to paid customers, we have about 0.7% conversion rate. For our trial customers that come in directly as a paid trial from the website and don’t go through the free tier, 23% of those will convert to a paid monthly account, which is a pretty good conversion rate.

Sramana Mitra: That’s an excellent conversion rate. I take it that’s your main business? >>>

Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How much were you selling for? What was your business model and pricing model? How were you monetizing your product?

Guy Mucklow: I might have mentioned earlier that we had two main licensing models in the early days because we saw mass market potential for this kind of service. We looked to go down a very lightweight transactional base licensing model. Let’s say $50 would buy you a thousand lookups. Those lookups would be valid for a 12-month period.

Our customer would come to us. They would buy the credit packs. We would get paid upfront. That model still exists today. The typical experience for our customer was that they would buy online and get invoiced online. That invoice information was being stored against their account. When it came to renewals, >>>