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Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: Axosoft CEO Hamid Shojaee (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me a little bit about competition. This is very standard, right? Going from an on-premise to SaaS subscription model, businesses will always take a hit and then come back to a growth path. That’s very standard process. My next question is more a question on competitive landscape ecosystem. What is your positioning? What makes customers choose you over other competitors and who are those competitors?

Hamid Shojaee: Our biggest and most successful competitor has been Atlassian.

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Black Entrepreneur in North Carolina Says No Bias: Rod Brown, COO of OnceLogix (Part 6)

Sramana: How big is your SaaS business from a revenue perspective, and how does that compare to your clinical side?

Rod Brown: A little north of $2 million dollars a year in recurring revenue. Last year the other side of the business did about $4.5 million dollars.

Sramana: Do you anticipate buying more behavioral health companies? >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DefinitiveDeals Founder Mattias Larson (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: From 2012 to 2014, what are the highlights of the journey?

Mattias Larson: We doubled the revenues in the first year and a half. We grew the business from 2 to 14 people. We really managed to crack paid search. We managed to get some big brands on board that were difficult to get before.

Sramana Mitra: What is the portfolio of sites that you now manage? Are they all deals kind of site?

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Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: Axosoft CEO Hamid Shojaee (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s step through the customer acquisition strategy. How did this $50,000 to $300,000 to $3 million happen? What was the customer acquisition strategy that was driving this growth?

Hamid Shojaee: While I was working at Microsoft, the way I treated it was that I don’t need this extra income. 100% of that extra income went into advertising. I experimented with Google AdWords as well as print ads. >>>

Black Entrepreneur in North Carolina Says No Bias: Rod Brown, COO of OnceLogix (Part 5)

Sramana: I like the way you positioned your sales force as commission-only independent contractors. That allowed you to use contractors who already had relationships and could augment their own offering with your software. That seems to be a very effective way to scale in the early stages of a business.

Rod Brown: Getting out of our backyard and moving sales into other states was huge. There was some legislative change in North Carolina that was detrimental to our business because it drove a lot of our clients out of business. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DefinitiveDeals Founder Mattias Larson (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Until 2012, it was you and your wife. In 2010, the travel stopped but you still continue in the same model and the same mode of just the two of you in the business?

Mattias Larson: Yes, correct.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of revenue ramp, what were the numbers for 2009 to 2012? >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: Axosoft CEO Hamid Shojaee (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2004?

Hamid Shojaee: First of all, that was a very interesting wakeup call in observing how Microsoft, as a company, operates and how competitive they are, and how laser-focused on competition they are. I got introduced to various different things with respect to talking points. Microsoft was very savvy in execution. I was quite awed by all of that. In a great company, I saw how they operated. They give a lot of power to their employees. I was quite impressed.

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Black Entrepreneur in North Carolina Says No Bias: Rod Brown, COO of OnceLogix (Part 4)

Sramana: That is a very good revenue stream for your first year. Great work! By the end of the first year, all three of you had quit your full-time jobs to work on the startup. What happened the second year?

Rod Brown: We just continued to grow. I think 95% of our clients deal with the Federal Government. They deal primarily with Medicaid. That exposes us to risks with the federal budget. Medicaid is a federal program that is managed by the states. The legislator of each state has the ability to direct those funds. The risk to us is that our customers funding can be affected overnight. >>>