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Bootstrapping to $20 Million in Charleston, South Carolina: eGroup CEO Mike Carter (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like what you used in the beginning is a technique that we see repeatedly. I’ve written a book on this particular technique – Bootstrapping Using Services. The advantage of having services in the bootstrapping stage is that cash starts coming in early. You don’t’ have to take a long, red-ink faith to develop a product before cash starts coming in. It’s a very popular bootstrapping technique. It’s tried and true for generations.

Mike Carter: Absolutely.

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Canadian Real Time Big Data Company’s Excellent Thought Leadership: Terapeak CEO Kevin North (Part 4)

Sramana: What year did you sell Dyadem?

Kevin North: I sold the company in 2011.

Sramana: Did you have to stay or were you free to move on?

Kevin North: I had to stay for 10 months. I had to do the integration and I had revenue obligations to meet. I had to fulfill their revenue plan through November 30th, 2011 because that was the close of their fiscal year.

I had to do all of the classic stuff such as team integration. I had to build the strategy for integrating their technologies with ours. It was a busy time. >>>

Bootstrapping to $20 Million in Charleston, South Carolina: eGroup CEO Mike Carter (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is the target customer base?

Mike Carter: Our target customer base is what we call the commercial mid-market. That would be organizations between 500 to 5,000 users. They typically fall into regional healthcare providers and financial service organizations – certainly not the large global organizations but regional and national groups. >>>

Canadian Real Time Big Data Company’s Excellent Thought Leadership: Terapeak CEO Kevin North (Part 3)

Sramana: When did you decide to raise money?

Kevin North: In 2006, I decided to raise money because we were experiencing some traction. We were still in single digits but that was a big improvement from 2004 when we still had less than $1 million in revenue. When I was raising money, we were at $7 million in revenue.

Sramana: That is a strong position to be in for the first round. Was it difficult raising money in Toronto?

Kevin North: I raised money in the US. We had term sheets from Canada and the US but we ultimately chose the US firms. It was a good decision because we had the best term sheets from a firm out of Wisconsin. We raised $8 million dollars and it was one of the best decisions that I ever made in my career. >>>

Bootstrapping to $20 Million in Charleston, South Carolina: eGroup CEO Mike Carter (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s anchor this on some dates. What year were you noodling with this idea?

Mike Carter: I graduated from college in 1992. I immediately went to work for this tech startup called The Computer Group. That company was acquired in 1996 by IKON Office Solutions. It’s part of the overall document workflow type of technology and automation offering. In 1999, I departed what was then IKON and started eGroup. I’ve been with eGroup since 1999. We’re on our 15^th year of bootstrapped company using credit cards and youthful ambition.

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Canadian Real Time Big Data Company’s Excellent Thought Leadership: Terapeak CEO Kevin North (Part 2)

Sramana: In 1998, we were in the height of the dot com boom. I am sure it was a bit different in Toronto, but how much of that market momentum did you feel?

Kevin North: We felt it a lot. It was a big thing because within 18 months of me joining Dyadem, my group of friends that had started Dyadem started another company, which was a dot com. There were two companies going on simultaneously and the dot com ended up crashing. The dot com was a company that was founded just to ride the startup wave. If you have ever seen the documentary Startup.com, that is exactly what we experienced. For us, the location was Toronto instead of the US, but the similarities were freaky. >>>

Bootstrapping to $20 Million in Charleston, South Carolina: eGroup CEO Mike Carter (Part 1)

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

Continuing our coverage of entrepreneurship far away from Silicon Valley, we bring you a conversation with Mike Carter, CEO of eGroup in Charleston, South Carolina. Typically, these environments have bred bootstrapped companies, and bootstrapping using services continues to be a popular method. Of late, incubators and accelerators are also cropping up, and building a more sophisticated ecosystem.

Sramana Mitra: Mike, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of circumstances leads up to the entrepreneurial story? >>>

Canadian Real Time Big Data Company’s Excellent Thought Leadership: Terapeak CEO Kevin North (Part 1)

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

We cover Big Data at length, both on Thought Leaders in Big Data and Entrepreneur Journeys. This story relates the tale of robust execution on a very insightful concept, delivering a real-time Big Data solution to merchants transacting on marketplaces like eBay.

Sramana: Kevin, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from and what kind of backstory leads up to Terapeak?

Kevin North: I was born and raised in Toronto and had a typical middle class upbringing. My father worked for the railroad. In high school, I became interested in computers. I was 14 and 15 years old when I started taking apart computers and rebuilding them. I learned how to program. >>>