Rapid Growth and $58 Million in Financing with a Virtual Company: Storyblok CEO Dominik Angerer (Part 1)

Dominik has built a 230-people virtual company and raised $58 million in Financing. But first, he and his Brazilian co-founder bootstrapped to $1M ARR before raising a penny! Clever SEO strategy was at the heart of the first success. Read on for more!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you as well as to Storyblok.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture to $12 Million: Sawyer Twain CEO Chris Turner (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was your team building strategy?

Chris Turner: At first, you just want to get people to be as passionate about the business as you are. It takes some time to realize that that’s not going to be the case. First, it was challenging. I have my own internal flaws. I could be a perfectionist. I don’t want to say micromanager, but, for the lack of a better word, I could be very anal on certain things. We rotated a handful of people.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture to $12 Million: Sawyer Twain CEO Chris Turner (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The two of you launched this thing around 2012?

Chris Turner: Around 2015.

Sramana Mitra: Did you take inventory or consignments?

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture to $12 Million: Sawyer Twain CEO Chris Turner (Part 1)

It is very difficult to find gaps in e-commerce these days. Chris found one and executed the hell out of it.

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?

Chris Turner: I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. I graduated from Arizona State University back in 2004.

Building a PropTech Venture with a Virtual Team: Discount Lots President Paul Hersko (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is your primary use case? City dwellers wanting to buy property outside the city?

Paul Hersko: Yes, I would say so.

Sramana Mitra: Were you self-financing still at this point?

Building a PropTech Venture with a Virtual Team: Discount Lots President Paul Hersko (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: All of the properties are in Los Angeles?

Paul Hersko: In the desert though, like near Joshua Tree. That’s how we started. We just bought a bunch of properties.

Sramana Mitra: Why did you choose outside of Los Angeles area?

Building a PropTech Venture with a Virtual Team: Discount Lots President Paul Hersko (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How do you finance yourselves?

Paul Hersko: We have a fund that we run. People can invest in our fund. Let’s say you invest $150,000. We take that money and purchase property with it and provide our investors a return. Then, we sell the land.

Sramana Mitra: What behavior are you seeing in your user base? Are people buying the land to make money off of the land or are they mostly buying just to use the land?

Building a PropTech Venture with a Virtual Team: Discount Lots President Paul Hersko (Part 2)

Paul Hersko: Then my entire life changed in 2019. My brother-in-law took me to this party. He said, “I have a good friend who owns this business. He’s our age. You might like him.” I started talking to him. I was learning about his business and he was like, “I have this company where I sell land online and people buy land with a credit card.”

We started to become good friends and learned more and more about what he was doing. I was absolutely fascinated. I was in e-commerce, which I loved. And it was real estate that I wanted to be involved with, but didn’t have experience in it.