Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where did the inbound interest come from? What countries?

Juha Lehtonen: We currently have clients in 17 countries. We get contacts from the Baltics, UK, Switzerland, and the Middle East.

Sramana Mitra: They come to you and you sell through online touchpoints. You don’t have to go visit people.

Juha Lehtonen: Yes.

Bootstrapping a Vertical CRM Product using Services: Cleverping CEO Haysam Ali (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Was there any technology element to what you were providing?

Haysam Ali: Not at first. While providing consulting services, we were able to build a CRM that provides intelligence into the data that we collect for them. That was then used to get other clients. Telefonica was the main case that opened the door to Frontier. We became one of the biggest players of Frontier in the US. We won a prize on the number of quality customers. That prize led us to other customers.

Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: All your early customers were in Finland?

Juha Lehtonen: Yes, the early customers were local. Once we were up and running, it took us about a year and a half to launch the product. We did it very gradually. Around 2008, we heard that there was a couple of Swedish guys in sales who were setting up their company in Sweden.

Their goal was to find two or three software products that they wanted to represent. We were able to get started with them. We were among those three software that they represented in Sweden. That was the beginning of a little bit of the international market.

Bootstrapping a Vertical CRM Product using Services: Cleverping CEO Haysam Ali (Part 1)

Haysam has built a $10M services business and alongside, he has bootstrapped a vertical CRM product for the telecom industry.

Read on to understand the nuances.

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

Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What were the deal sizes?

Juha Lehtonen: It was very little – annual fees of €20,000. It was more like an advertisement for us. In addition to developing the platform, we did quite a lot of projects. We needed to self-finance. After the initial investment, we didn’t raise any other capital. That was the only capital we got. We ended up building up a consultation business.

Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 1)

European companies often follow a methodical, deliberate approach to business building as opposed to mindlessly chasing venture capital.

Juha has used the principles of bootstrapping using services to build his venture from Finland.

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 Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: It’s true about men also. Unless you come from our kinds of backgrounds, you don’t reach this community. If you come from an average background, you don’t have much of a choice than go through the bootstrapping route. We belong to a very privileged elite class of people who have access. Most of the industries don’t have that access.

Aparna Dhinakaran: Maybe we agree to disagree on this one.

From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You believe there is a bias from customers?

Aparna Dhinakaran: No, I think there is a bias in the tech industry itself. In general, there are not that many women that go into AI. I don’t think that we can argue that we’ve reached a neutral point. If I saw that in reality, there would be more women founders.

Sramana Mitra: I’m not asking you the question on statistics. I’m asking about your personal experience. Do you face bias from customers?