Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Startup with a Paycheck to Exit: Jay Perkins, Co-founder of Kettlebell Kings (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do? You said you started a company on the BigCommerce platform?

Jay Perkins: I started a business called Kettlebell Kings while I was still employed at BigCommerce. Kettlebells are basically fitness equipment. Along with my co-founders, we would hold meetings for a year and a half leading up to when we formally launched. We knew we wanted to start a business.

We were like-minded, but we didn’t know what we wanted to sell. We would kick around ideas. We eventually decided on kettlebells. There just weren’t a lot of companies focused on building a product and lifestyle brand. We just went for it.

Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Startup with a Paycheck to Exit: Jay Perkins, Co-founder of Kettlebell Kings (Part 1)

There are roll-ups of e-commerce brands going on right now. This case study delves into one such that has exited into a roll-up effort.

Jay Perkins currently runs Living.Fit which produces digital workouts, fitness education courses, and fitness equipment.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Solo Student Entrepreneur to $5M: David Liu, CEO of Deltapath (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: When did the Japan hospital deal happen?

David Liu: This was around 2014. It started in 2012. It was a pretty long cycle. With the funding, we opened up our Japan office. We hired five people.

Sramana Mitra: Was this a use case that you were then going to sell to other hospitals?

David Liu: Yes. We wanted to become the de-facto standard. We started doing other public hospitals. As time goes by, we integrate with a lot more IoT devices like sensors and radars. We basically work with the entire ecosystem. We form a whole ecosystem of partners that help us to make our solution even stronger.

Solo Student Entrepreneur to $5M: David Liu, CEO of Deltapath (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Then what happens after 2011?

David Liu: Around 2015, we had the first investor. We had a high-net-worth individual who was interested in investing in the business.

Sramana Mitra: How did that person get involved? How did you find him?

David Liu: His son had just started a new e-commerce business and went public. He had some extra cash and wanted to invest in something related but not exactly e-commerce. He was introduced to us. We raised a million dollars.

Solo Student Entrepreneur to $5M: David Liu, CEO of Deltapath (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In 2007 when you put together the appliance, how many customers did you get? How much were they paying on average?

David Liu: By 2007, we’d won Nokia. Nokia started deploying us globally. We also got Juniper Networks.

Sramana Mitra: This is still just you?

David Liu: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic!

Solo Student Entrepreneur to $5M: David Liu, CEO of Deltapath (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How did you find these customers?

David Liu: They came to us. They found our website.

Sramana Mitra: Google search?

David Liu: Yes. SIP is the industry standard for VoIP and PBX basically means phone system. I remember if you type SIP PBX, we would come up on the first page.

Solo Student Entrepreneur to $5M: David Liu, CEO of Deltapath (Part 1)

David started Deltapath as a college student. Another case in point is that solo entrepreneurs CAN build sustainable, profitable businesses.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

David Liu: I was born in San Jose, California. I had a really interesting childhood. My parents moved overseas to Hong Kong as my dad had a career opportunity. The whole family moved when I was still in elementary. I was thrown into a completely different world. I didn’t really speak Chinese. I cannot read or write Chinese.

From Solo Techie Entrepreneur to High Growth, Profitable Enterprise AI Success Story: Findability Sciences CEO Anand Mahurkar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How big is the team?

Anand Mahurkar: We are about 170 people. We leap to 200 worldwide next quarter.

Sramana Mitra: What is the distribution?

Anand Mahurkar: The largest population is in India – about 90.

Sramana Mitra: Where in India?