Bootstrapping to $7 Million: Constellix CEO Steven Job (Part 1)

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

Steven has built a lean company with 37 people and has scaled it to $7 million. Read on to learn how.

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?

Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was Infosys paying you extra for doing this? 

Anjan Pathak: No, they were not paying, because they were our first customer. We used to get a 5% discount on the gift vouchers. That was our primary revenue. Of course, there was a lot of incoming cash flow, but the primary revenue was anything that they gave. 

Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the business model? 

Anjan Pathak: It’s very simple. Samsung might have a new phone on their website. They want to sell it directly to corporate employees, but they cannot. They need a medium to market themselves, so they give the deal or coupon to us which can be redeemed on their website. 

Sramana Mitra: Does Samsung pay you for this?

Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle (Part 1)

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

I am always thrilled to do stories of pioneering entrepreneurs building technology startups in remote locations. Anjan brings us into the nascent scene in Guwahati, in the North-East Indian state of Assam.

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

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Criteria CEO Josh Millet (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Here’s a synthesizing question. What can your technology do that an AI-based approach cannot do?

Josh Millet: In an objective and transparent way, our technology measures key competencies, abilities, and behavior traits that we know are predictive of job success and business outcomes.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Criteria CEO Josh Millet (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What is the customer acquisition strategy? 

Josh Millet: When we were bootstrapping, we built our business on the back of Google. A lot of customers came in through the web. We did spend quite a bit of money on Google with paid ads. Over time, we built a great content strategy.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Criteria CEO Josh Millet (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You went after the startups because they were hiring a lot. Intuitively, it would strike me that the large enterprise market would be more conducive to hiring evaluation solutions. 

Josh Millet: Yes, we probably should have had you as an advisor back then. We would’ve figured that out quickly. When we looked at the market initially we thought that the enterprise market was pretty well-served.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Criteria CEO Josh Millet (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down on the starting of Criteria. What did you start with? How was the journey? Who was involved? What was the bootstrapping process?

Josh Millet: When I was working at that other company, I started participating in interviews with applicants. We weren’t good at hiring sometimes. A lot of companies struggle with that.