Bootstrapping Using Services to $10M: Zimit CEO James Cramer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did the acquisition happen?

James Cramer: We would occasionally get solicitations from bankers. We would always entertain it to get a sense of which company was worth it and what was going on in terms of acquisitions. One day, I got an email from a banker in New York that said, “I have a client that is looking to make an acquisition in the United States for a company that had these criteria.”

Building a Fintech Company from Luxembourg: STOKR CEO Tobias Seidl (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The game hasn’t been released yet?

Tobias Seidl: No. What we are offering on our platform is for early-stage companies to share future profits. For revenue-making companies, they share a part of their revenues. We always have a balance of these two components.

Sramana Mitra: What is the profile of the investors who are coming onto your platform?

Bootstrapping Using Services to $10M: Zimit CEO James Cramer (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Help me out with one piece of this story. In an entrepreneur journey, the first time you’re doing it without personal money is a different ball game than when you have made money and are doing it a second time. By the time you come to Zimit, you had money. It’s a different situation. The bootstrapping using services story is important in CPG. How did you get your first customer? What got you your first customer? 

James Cramer: My partner and I were both employees of our previous companies. We met on a project that their company and our company were working on together. We were in our mid-20s. You can convince yourself of a lot of things at that age. We started to convince ourselves that we could make it on our own. We convinced ourselves that we could compete with the companies that we worked for even though they were billion-dollar organizations.

Building a Fintech Company from Luxembourg: STOKR CEO Tobias Seidl (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Much is happening by way of innovation in fund raising exchanges in the field of FinTech. Here is a story from Europe.

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 $10M: Zimit CEO James Cramer (Part 1)

Among the biases of the Venture Capital industry that need to be categorically ignored, Bootstrapping Using Services happens to be on the top of the list. Read on for yet another fantastic textbook case study.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Building a Unicorn and Establishing the Customer Success Category: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight (Part 5)

Nick Mehta: The business went from an unattractive investment from a financial investor’s point of view to a highly attractive one. We are one of those companies that has a lot of long-term potential because we are the main player in the space. I never like to say that we own the category, but so far, we have been the leader.

Vista came to us. They are traditionally a private equity firm but they have become more of a growth equity firm. They went from investing in businesses that were about costs to investing in a high-growth business. They approached us many times over the years. A lot of their portfolio companies use Gainsight. They have this first-hand knowledge of Gainsight.

Building a Unicorn and Establishing the Customer Success Category: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch topics and talk a bit about your financing strategy. I know that you did something recently. Talk me through the whole financial strategy. 

Nick Mehta: That is a big part of our success too. It’s expensive to create a category. You have to do these events and hire people. The scales don’t come right away. Overall, we raised $150 million. In modern days, it’s not a lot of money anymore. In the early days, that was a lot of money. We raised our first round amounting to $6 million from Battery Ventures. They believed in us.

Building a Unicorn and Establishing the Customer Success Category: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that you want to discuss?

Nick Mehta: A second thing is bringing our culture and values, which I think is a bit novel. We feel passionate about that. We brought that into our community. Many of these customer success people feel like they are a part of Gainsight. I was talking to one of our customers and she said, “I basically feel like I am an extended part of Gainsight.”