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Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 2)

Sramana: When you started this project, what was going on in your mind? Why did you decide to tackle this particular problem?

Aaron Fulkerson: I saw a problem I thought we could address. I had a bunch of friends who worked at WebSphere, and they had a couple of thousand people working on their project. I saw this at Microsoft as well. I wanted to develop a more intelligent environment for these people to have access to product knowledge. My original idea was to do something based on the XML schema. >>>

Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 1)

Aaron Fulkerson is the co-founder and CEO of MindTouch, a company that offers a cloud-based self-service help center and knowledge-as-a-service platform. Prior to founding MindTouch he was a member of Microsoft’s Advanced Strategies and Policies division, where he worked on distributed systems research reporting to Microsoft chief strategy officer, Craig Mundie. Aaron has also helped launch several nonprofits and businesses outside the software industry. He has been a contributing writer at CNN, Fortune, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, TechWeb, CMSWire, and Forbes Magazine. He has been tapped by the White House to inform national education policy, and he has been invited to the eG8 to discuss international technology policy. He is a sought-after public speaker who has presented at dozens of technology and business conferences. Aaron graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a BS in computer science.

Sramana: Aaron, tell us where you are from and a bit about your background. What are the roots of your entrepreneurial story?

Aaron Fulkerson: I grew up in a small town south of San Jose, California. Back then it was very rural and was still a farming community. At the same time, Silicon Valley was starting to blossom. In the 1980s, as a kid, I would dial into bulletin board services. I also wrote quite a bit of code. I did all of this from the farm I was growing up on. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan (Part 7)

Sramana: What does the competitive landscape look like in your market?

Itai Sadan: We have always been considered the de facto leader in our space. Most companies copy what we do and try to close the game with DudaMobile. They look at our features and will copy them in their releases. As we grow and move into new spaces, we are now starting to enter into spaces that already have established competitors. In those new spaces we are not the de facto leaders, and in fact we are looking at the leaders in those markets much like our competition looked to us in our core market.

Sramana: What are the new spaces you are entering?

Itai Sadan: Early on we identified that small businesses would find it challenging to go into mobile. What changes today is that the diversification of screens tends to be an even bigger problem. The devices around us are very diverse, ranging from phones and tablets to 70” Internet-connected TVs. Our vehicle GPS systems are connecting to the Internet, and we have smart watches coming out. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan (Part 6)

Sramana: What do your premium functions offer?

Itai Sadan: Our premium features help you drive more traffic to your site and grow your business. We have a widget that is called “click to call” that lets users visiting the mobile website click a button and call the business. We have another widget called “click to maps” that helps people navigate to the business establishment. These are the things that small businesses care about. They don’t understand page views and unique visitors. They understand what it means when their phone rings and more people walk in their store. That is what we help them do for $9 a month.

Sramana: What is your business model for the affiliate relationships?

Itai Sadan: What we have developed is a long-tail reseller channel. There are a lot of groups that cater to small businesses that think that DudaMobile is a great tool for their tool set. These are companies who are web designers and digital marketers. They run agencies. We have a special group today inside of DudaMobile that caters to those partners. We have thousands of those partner relationships today. The great news is that once you establish a relationship like that, you have essentially created a virtual sales force. They evangelize mobile sites and sell multiple sites. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan (Part 5)

Sramana: What was your next deal after Webs.com?

Itai Sadan: Our next deal was with Yahoo small businesses as well as with an Intuit company. We have since done deals with companies like Google.

Sramana: What was your deal with Google?

Itai Sadan: In 2012 Google had a marketing initiative to get small businesses to go mobile. We co-branded our editor with Google, and we gave all Google customers their mobile sites free for one year. At the end of that first year, everyone that we were able to retain remained a DudaMobile customer. That was a very good deal that brought us huge branding and a large amount of customers. Seeing our brand next to Google’s brand was very powerful. Google essentially let all of their AdSense, AdWords and Analytics customers know about this initiative. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan (Part 4)

Sramana: What kind of deal did you structure with AT&T?

Itai Sadan: It was a reseller deal. They were using our technology internally and we trained their staff to use our product. That was an amazing QA exercise of our product because we suddenly had 40 AT&T web designers working with our product giving us feedback. We had to quickly integrate that feedback into product enhancements. That really helped us get the product out the door in a higher quality, earlier.

AT&T then sold the product to small businesses. They had hundreds of the thousands of small businesses that advertised on YP.com and those were the first customers getting our product as a white label.

Sramana: Was AT&T selling your product as a service or as a product?

Itai Sadan: AT&T sold it as a service. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan (Part 3)

Sramana: You had the vision for DudaMobile but left SAP in 2010. What happened during the in-between years?

Itai Sadan: After I had been relocated to Palo Alto to work in the SAP headquarters, I brought Amir into SAP to work on my team. We were both working in Palo Alto for SAP when I had had the idea. I brought it up to Amir, and we began talking about it. We got all excited about the idea and contemplated leaving SAP, but we kept joking around about different reasons we should stay at SAP. Our bonuses were due in 2009 so we waited for the bonuses.

That really shows how long it takes to develop software. We were working on the project during the evenings and on weekends for that two-year period. It takes a while to write good software, and we did not want to leave the company until we were able to sustain ourselves. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan (Part 2)

Sramana: How long did you work for SAP?

Itai Sadan: I worked for them for six years. During that time I was relocated to Palo Alto, where I spent most of my time. Even within a large company like SAP, I found a way to build my own little startup environment. I have always felt entrepreneurial and have had a million different ideas for things that I would want to do to improve the world with software.

During my time at SAP, I was able to get senior management to buy into an idea I had for a new product. I was able to put a team together and develop the concept into a product that was sold to 3,000 different customers. >>>