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Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What state was Wrike at when you came to Silicon Valley? Did you have something? Did you have an MVP that you started to work on?

Andrew Filev: It was a very early prototype. I think we launched a beta version at a conference in Paris. Then right after that, I moved to the Valley. The first official launch happened when I was already in the Valley at a conference called Silicon Valley launch. There are many more conferences these days but I vividly remember those early days. That was around 2007.

Sramana Mitra: What happened after the launch? I assume that you are using the proceeds from your consulting company to get the Wrike product off the ground?

Andrew Filev: We self-funded it first. Then we bootstrapped it. Then we got venture fund. By the time we got to our first investment, we already had thousands of paying customers. When we started, I always focused on customers first. >>>

Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You were doing, more or less, the same thing that the company you were working for was doing?

Belisario Rosas: Yes, very much. We just continued accepting clients that we were dealing with or looking for new clients.

Sramana Mitra: How did that ramp?

Belisario Rosas: Like I said earlier, we started with a large debt because we had just done a large trip in Europe visiting customers with several orders. We had about $300 in the bank and we just bought and sold parts on a day to day basis.

Sramana Mitra: How much revenue did you generate at the end of the first year?

Belisario Rosas: $250,000 from July 1989 to December. >>>

Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In the event that you’re using equity as a financial instrument, is the expectation exit or do you also do dividend style financing?

Peter Lehrman: We don’t do any of it. We’re the platform that connects the entrepreneurs with the investors. Those decisions are determined by the investors in partnership with the entrepreneurs that they back.

Sramana Mitra: If you were to look at that 30% of equity deals that happen on your platform, what percentage of those are exit expectation versus dividend expectation?

Peter Lehrman: We don’t track that specifically. The majority of companies on Axial are profitable so they have the ability to pay dividends but we don’t track the dividend data that comes from those companies. We’re just not part of those conversations. I think, in a lot of cases, those >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do this a bit chronologically. You finished college in what year?

Andrew Filev: A little bit more than a decade ago, I think.

Sramana Mitra: The Internet was in full swing in 2005. You were still in Russia at this point?

Andrew Filev: Yes, I was still in Russia. I was eager to move. I was passionate about moving to Silicon Valley since my teenage years, long before I started my own company. I actually delayed it because I couldn’t’ just leave the company in its infancy. I’m not the kind of guy who drops things midway. The fact that I had a company delayed it a little bit, but since my teenage years, I was passionate about moving to the Valley.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you move?

Andrew Filev: I moved around 2006. >>>

Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 1)

We hear a lot from Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. We hear some from Europeans. But thus far, not as much from Latin American entrepreneurs. Belisario Rosas is Peruvian, and is also interested in fostering further entrepreneurship in Latin America.

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

Belisario Rosas: I was born in Lima, Peru.

Sramana Mitra: Did you grow up in Lima?

Belisario Rosas: Yes, I did. I went through elementary, middle school, and high school in Lima. When I left, I wanted to study Medicine. So I went to McGill University in Montreal, Canada to study Medicine. In the second year, I felt that it wasn’t my call. I had a liking >>>

Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 1)

Capital marketplaces are quite the trend these days. This story traces the evolution of Axial. This is a very different marketplace from AngelList.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some context and background of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Peter Lehrman: I was born and raised in New York City. I was also educated in New York. I went off to college at the University of Virginia. I came back to New York. My timing of graduating from school was pretty bad. I graduated in 2001 from undergrad and 2008 from graduate school. When I came back from undergrad, I joined my brother who co-founded a company here in New York. I spent the first six years of my career developing that business with him and his co-founder.

Sramana Mitra: What business is that?

Peter Lehrman: It goes by the name GLG today. It’s an expert network that’s largely used by the world’s investors to make better investing decisions. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 1)

Andrew has built a company with a rigorous data-driven approach. Learn how!

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?

Andrew Filev: I was born in St. Petersburg in Russia. I got interested in computers pretty early. I spent a lot of my childhood playing with computers, building and programming, and designing. I also had a big interest in other sciences as well. I competed in different math, physics, and chemistry competitions.

Part of my heritage and the reason why I did a lot of that was that if I go back in time and compare my upbringing with what I see today for my kids, there was very little entertainment. Everything was pretty scarce. I spent my childhood summers mostly reading books and playing chess >>>

An Emerging Success Story from Indiana: Fathom Voice CEO Cameron Weeks (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What are some of the bigger strategic moves as well as accomplishments in 2013 and 2014?

Cameron Weeks: We talked about the big event in 2014. It was literally a year-long event living through that whole process and uncovering what went wrong, and building better control systems to protect against it. At the same point in time, we invested heavily in the product. We started off as a local sales company working with people around us. By this point in time, we have clients in all 50 states and multiple countries. It was a very risky move when we did it especially with what was happening on the sales side. We decided to invest in a new data replication system. We knew that one of the ways that we’ll be able to compete is provide a single solution to multinational companies. So something like ExactTarget that is headquartered in Indianapolis but has sales, marketing, and support offices in the UK, Australia, and the Asia Pacific market. No one was able to service that. >>>