Solo Founder to Funded FinTech Startup Scaling Rapidly: Torpago CEO Brent Jackson (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you need equity financing or were you doing it completely on the basis of that seed round and these lending facilities?

Brent Jackson: In between, we did do another seed round for $2.4 million in equity fund.

Sramana Mitra: This was from a VC?

From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Do you primarily go after the large enterprises?

Mahendra Alladi: Of late, we focus more on the large enterprises, but it’s a mix.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to a million-dollar ARR?

Mahendra Alladi: Within the first year.

Sramana Mitra: You continue to bootstrap?

Solo Founder to Funded FinTech Startup Scaling Rapidly: Torpago CEO Brent Jackson (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Who was doing the software work?

Brent Jackson: We have a team in India. I’m a sole founder. One of the investors at the last company had a lot of ties to consultants in India. We used them to build the first prototype.

Sramana Mitra: What about the earliest customers? Did you go back to the people you were working with?

From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the MVP that you came up with? You had worked in that domain and created a vision for what would be the product that you wanted to go out with. You say it’s accidental, but a lot of developers transitioning to entrepreneurs encounter problems in their work life and go on to solve that problem. It is a common path.

By the time you were in the second one, you had a very deep view having worked with thousands of customers. Out of all that you observed, what was the minimum that you could start getting into the market with?

Solo Founder to Funded FinTech Startup Scaling Rapidly: Torpago CEO Brent Jackson (Part 1)

Brent was a solo founder starting up a Fintech company. Read on how he put one foot before the other to navigate his journey.

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?

From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you start?

Mahendra Alladi: From 2006 to 2007, we were doing services. With HP, there was also a bit of a services element. I was really representing HP to their customers. There, I had a much bigger exposure. That opened up my understanding of this domain.

Sramana Mitra: How did you get into HP?

From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 1)

Mahendra transitioned from a developer to a successful entrepreneur with his first company, exited it, and then started ACCELQ. ACCELQ already has 200 customers and is a profitable, bootstrapped company growing fast. A wonderful and inspiring story!

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?

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to come up with a product?

Manish Jethani: This is very interesting. We signed an agreement with one customer that if we deliver that product, they will pay us $50,000.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of customer?

Manish Jethani: This was the largest food-tech delivery company in India. They were scaling hyper-fast. They didn’t have a team. After we got such strong validation, we started building the product. From my past learning, it was obvious that unless we have a very strong intent from the customer, we’re not going to build the product. The first version was out in four months. It didn’t have a lot of functionality. It wasn’t self-serve yet.