Solo Entrepreneur Focused on Autonomy as Key Success Driver: Hank Luhring, Founder of IssueTrak (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When you started doing this alone, how long did that solo journey last before you started hiring programmers?

Hank Luhring: Six months. My first client was Volvo Penta. The colleague of a former colleague called and said, “Do you know anybody who can develop some applications?” It happened to be a homebuilder’s association. They needed a new membership database. They had ideas for what they wanted the package to do.

Solo Entrepreneur Focused on Autonomy as Key Success Driver: Hank Luhring, Founder of IssueTrak (Part 1)

Hank tells the story of a solo entrepreneur who bootstrapped his product startup with services over a longer, slower period, while maintaining a high quality lifestyle. Success is personal. Autonomy and quality of life matter more to certain entrepreneurs than the flawed “Go Big and Go Home” mantra that VCs preach.

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?

Bootstrapping Using Services to a Fabulous Exit from Ohio: Gathi Analytics CEO Vamsi Kora (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There are some pedagogy that we have come to understand. As I told you, I’ve done thousands of case studies. I have a lot of insight into how people have played their hands. Because you have domain knowledge, a very common way is to verticalize and go after specific verticals.

Vamsi Kora: That’s exactly what we did. If you look at our customer base today, every one of them is in either insurance or banking. We are also very specific. I came to realize is that this blind belief that playing to your strength always appeals to me. Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. Playing to your strength always gives you so much freedom and opportunity.

Bootstrapping Using Services to a Fabulous Exit from Ohio: Gathi Analytics CEO Vamsi Kora (Part 3)

Vamsi Kora: We decided to focus on our core strength, which is leveraging platforms and products that exist in the marketplace and leverage our services that we built so far, keep maturing them, and provide these as accelerators. In that sense, this is more akin to the business approach of Palantir.

You bring two critical aspects. You bring industry expertise and become a true partner for a CIO, Chief Data Officer, and Chief Digital Officer. You augment that with these accelerators that we built that help them think about the right combination of tools for them and argue why specific set of tools are needed or not needed.

Bootstrapping Using Services to a Fabulous Exit from Ohio: Gathi Analytics CEO Vamsi Kora (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay with Nationwide?

Vamsi Kora: I stayed until 2007. I became a full-time employee in an initial management position. Then in 2007, I moved across town to join JP Morgan. JP Morgan bought Bank One. I kept on growing in my career rapidly. I felt that my two interests are enterprise data and building impactful global teams. That aligned very well with the opportunities I got at Chase. That helped me hone my skills.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay there?

Bootstrapping Using Services to a Fabulous Exit from Ohio: Gathi Analytics CEO Vamsi Kora (Part 1)

Vamsi has bootstrapped Gathi to over $26M in revenue in four years and exited at a fabulous multiple. Much to learn from 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?

12 Udemy Courses on How To Build a Startup with a Small Amount of Capital

Most businesses can be launched in a capital efficient manner. Most businesses can go a long way in a bootstrapped mode. As long as you’re not taking on capital guzzlers like drug discovery or semiconductor chips, you have many options to explore.

At 1Mby1M, we don’t insist on fund raising. A bootstrapped, capital-efficient, million dollar business is considered a success in our worldview, as long as you are profitable and sustainable.

Non-Technical Founder Building a Tech Startup to over $10m: David Moricca, CEO of Socialive (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What is the total amount from friends and family investors to get to $10 million?

David Moricca: Maybe $9 million. $6.5 million was not as Socialive. A lot of companies do pivot. I hear stories about companies who fail for the first time. They just restart. The thing about that is you’re leaving your investors high and dry.

Sramana Mitra: That is correct. If you have professional investors who are accustomed to taking losses and just writing off things, it’s one thing. If it’s personal relationships at stake, you have to honor those. Friends and family investments have pros and cons. What you’re pointing out is that if you leave them high and dry, then you lose the relationship.