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Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DefinitiveDeals Founder Mattias Larson (Part 1)

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

We’re seeing a clear trend towards bootstrapping digital startups while holding onto a full-time job. Mattias Larson has a simple but powerful story to tell.

Sramana Mitra: Mattias, tell us about you. Where did your journey begin and in what kind of background?

Mattias Larson: I was born in the northern part of Sweden – actually, not that far away from the Arctic Circle – in a small town with a population of maybe 40,000. I grew up there and I went to college in a nearby town. I graduated with a master’s degree in Computer Science and International Marketing.

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Building a Silicon Valley Style Company from Australia: ROKT CEO Bruce Buchanan (Part 7)

Sramana: One of the things I really like about your platform is that because you are sitting in the transaction, you have a very rich value proposition. You are also able to engage with people who have their credit card out. The Internet is full of free riders. You have filtering those out. Targeting on a media site that is full of free loaders is one of the worst things you can do.

Bruce Buchanan: I agree. We will benchmark against add tracking technologies used by media agencies.
When we benchmark it against a standard pixel and third part cookie which is what everyone else uses, we get a 10% to 20% match. Using our technology, we get an 80% match. That is the power of using PII data to understand who the consumer is. >>>

Building a Healthcare IT Company to $100 Million: Dr. Rob Langdon, Co-Founder of T-System (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What scale is the company at now?

Rob Langdon: It’s approaching nine figures.

Sramana Mitra: Sounds like it’s becoming an enterprise software and healthcare IT company at this point. Is there anything else that is interesting in the story that you would like to discuss? Paper played such an important role. That’s actually very counterintuitive for people who mostly work in technology. Sometimes, the simple solution stares at you in the face and you just ignore it.

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Building a Silicon Valley Style Company from Australia: ROKT CEO Bruce Buchanan (Part 6)

Sramana: I like your approach because it lets the partners know that you are not taking their data and helping somebody else.

Bruce Buchanan: That is very important and that is why our partners are comfortable with us. One of the things that we had to go through with the eBays of the world was a very comprehensive audit by the Australian government. IP security, in terms of the knowledge that the information is going to be protected and handled in the way expected, is very critical. Ours is a white label business. Our only reason for being is to support our partners. Our efforts and focus is around supporting our partners.

Sramana: Do small businesses factor into your business model?

Bruce Buchanan: We are very excited about the ability for small businesses to participate for the first time. The messaging is very simple. It is presented as text based questions during the transaction under the partner’s brand. This makes it very easy for businesses in the local area to participate in that environment. >>>

Building a Healthcare IT Company to $100 Million: Dr. Rob Langdon, Co-Founder of T-System (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Do you have a sales channel that was selling the paper product into the hospitals and physician groups then switched over to selling this software product?

Rob Langdon: We tried different configurations with the sales group. For a while, paper and electronics were separate. Then they were combined. Then we tried regions. Since the company has grown, we have other services – billing and consulting. That sales force, they’re tasked with opening up more opportunities and grow our customer base, which is close to 35% of the hospitals in United States.

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Building a Silicon Valley Style Company from Australia: ROKT CEO Bruce Buchanan (Part 5)

Sramana: You definitely do not need to raise money. However, if you apply the same logic as you did in Australia, then there could be a case for raising money in the US, right?

Bruce Buchanan: We would if there was an opportunity to extend the network. We would be interested in a partner that could help us achieve extending the network. Our independence is important to us as well. When you are operating in transactional environments like we do, our independence is a significant bonus.

Sramana: Venture money is usually considered independent money.

Bruce Buchanan: It is. I guess the point there is that if you take money off of a bigger player who is also a partner, then there could be some tricky navigation. >>>

Building a Healthcare IT Company to $100 Million: Dr. Rob Langdon, Co-Founder of T-System (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You earned $30 to $40 million just licensing the paper product?

Rob Langdon: Yes. The paper product continues to this day.

Sramana Mitra: Obviously, you built the software using the revenue of the paper product, right? >>>

Building a Silicon Valley Style Company from Australia: ROKT CEO Bruce Buchanan (Part 4)

Sramana: What kind of revenue share do you get? Do you charge on a CPM basis?

Bruce Buchanan: On the advertising side, it is a marketplace. You bid for access to a particular customer segment. The systems offer dynamic optimization. The optimization engineering is some of the best. That is really the secret sauce. You only get the opportunity to present a customer with 3 or 4 messages, so it is critical that they be the right messages.

If HotelClub wants to get access to a particular customer and they know what types of customers convert for them, then we will present to that customer for them at that location. Depending on the bid price and what the engagement is likely to be, we will create a quality score for the expected engagement. The bid price from the advertisers gets ranked and the top advertisers are the ones that appear first. Internal offers are presented the same way. An internal value is presented. >>>