Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You started doing programming work for this one company. What happens after that?

Sadek Ali: Once I had gotten that particular gig, the actual relationship lasted about two years. It happened to be with OpenText. This is where I got immersed with search technologies. I fell in love with them at that time. My brother and I took a look at how to deal with large data intractable problems. We looked at image processing and environmental systems. That led me into doing my Masters.

Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

Nick Carter: About 2013 is when I started working on food and agriculture.

Sramana Mitra: What were you doing?

Nick Carter: I started a food manufacturing business. Eventually, I realized that I needed to use my tech entrepreneurship skills to focus on the local food scene. I built technology to power an online farmer’s market. It’s a two-sided marketplace called Market Wagon.

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 1)

Sadek has built an e-commerce platform company for the mid-market within the Microsoft ecosystem. Read on to learn more.

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?

Sadek Ali: I was born in Canada. I grew up there. Most of my adult life has been spent here.

Building a 2-sided Farm to Table Marketplace from Indiana: Nick Carter, CEO of Market Wagon (Part 1)

Nick tells a wonderful story of building Market Wagon into a thriving marketplace. Covid has been an immense force multiplier for the venture.

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?

Solo Entrepreneur Focused on Autonomy as Key Success Driver: Hank Luhring, Founder of IssueTrak (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How much were you pricing?

Hank Luhring: It was $100 a month. This was before the cloud. There was a term back then called Application Service Provider.

Sramana Mitra: I remember that. It was the precursor to the cloud.

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.