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Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 3)

Sramana: Did you have any market validation of your new hosting business mode?

Christopher Aker: I knew that it was going to work. I was very sure of it. Success by my measure then was maybe $100,000 in revenue a year in managed wordpress plans.

Sramana: Were you doing all of this out of Nashville?

Christopher Aker: Yes, I lived by myself in a 2 bedroom apartment. I did this by myself out of my apartment. I basically said goodbye to my friends for a year and worked on Linode. It took me about seven months. I had to code the back end, the website, and the front end controls. I took the billing system that I had from my little web hosting business and extended its functionality to handle the new stuff. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 1)

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

Today’s entrepreneurial landscape is full of serial entrepreneurs who start really young and build company after company. Some succeed and some fail. David’s four companies have all been successful.

Sramana Mitra: David, where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What’s the back story?

David Steinberg: I grew up in New York City.

Sramana Mitra: Was there any entrepreneurship in your DNA?

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Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 2)

Sramana: What were you doing at HealthStream? Were you part of the early team in any way?

Christopher Aker: I was a technical employee and I was able to go through the IPO ride while I was there. We did not make any money there. We were the last tech company to go public just before the crash. In fact, we went public the day before the crash. That was a valuable lesson all around. One of the things that I have done throughout my career is pay very close attention to how companies run marketing, control their image, and make decisions.

I lasted about four years at HealthStream before I decided that the time was right to break out and start my own company. I had a little bit of savings, about $15,000. I had left my job without an idea of what I wanted to do, but I knew I was going to give myself 12 months to make something happen. >>>

Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 1)

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

Chris had many opportunities to raise money along the way while bootstrapping to a $60 million revenue level. Find out why he chose not to.

Sramana: Chris, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Tell me where you are from and set the stage for your entrepreneurial journey.

Christopher Aker: I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. We lived on the main land off of a coastal barrier island. I had a traditional American, South Jersey coastal upbringing. We had a lot of summer jobs and a huge amount of people would flock to our town in the summer to enjoy the beach. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 7)

Sramana: You have described an IT organization that is disjointed. You have a new model, IT as a supply chain. How do you actually solve the IT problem? What are you doing for a customer that makes the transition to IT supply chain?

Mohammed Farooq: We discover what any of the business units have purchased in the cloud. We reverse engineer the bill of materials and we then give CIOs and CFOs a list of who is buying what, and how much they are buying. We let them know where their assets are.

Now they have to centralize payment and billing. That cannot remain with every billing unit, it has to get into General Ledger. All the administration that is associated with the cloud is very much a utility like a telephone. You have to centralize the business operations aspect. Our software solves that. >>>

From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: When did you start United Web?

Tomas Gorny: In 2008. Over the years, United Web became an investment vehicle for our and other businesses. What I’m really focused on and really passionate about is the business that we do now – Nextiva. Nextiva technically started its development on the product in 2006. In 2006, we looked at the telecommunication business. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 6)

Sramana: The bottom line is that you still have a lot of marketing to do to educate enterprises about the transformations you enable.

Mohammed Farooq: Yes, we do. Last year, we had a lot of work to do in this space, and this year, we are finally getting closer. People are starting to understand how they need to operate in the new world of cloud. We have been educating heavily for the past two years. This year, we are going to be operating in an education and operational mode. We are starting to see mainstream adoption.

Sramana: How much analyst coverage have you been able to get around this?

Mohammed Farooq: We have been recognized by Gartner. You will see us as the leading vendor in the cloud service broker space. >>>

From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You had web hosting, email, domains, and you had a suite of widgets that people need to build and host a web business. You were doing it all for a flat price at $7.95 a month.

Tomas Gorny: That’s correct. The magic was really in the last statement. The control panel and the widgets really opened the market for us. That’s the same thing that opened the market for Windows. >>>