Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do during those four years?

Roberto Milk: I was working 100-hour weeks. 

Sramana Mitra: You were doing this full-time before launching the site?

Roberto Milk: I was learning as much as I could. I speak with entrepreneurs a lot and just try to think about how to codify this. First step is finding an idea that really is your calling. Next step is building skills if you don’t have them.

From eBay Seller to Software Entrepreneur: Seller Labs CEO Paul Johnson (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You shut down that business?

Paul Johnson: We did. We sold all the inventory that we had and cashed out. I met up with a business partner and went for the most peculiar e-commerce business anybody has ever done.

While we were still operating the guitar store, I was looking for something else. I knew that there was a time for it. I would say that this is one of the important things in business – to be able to understand the horizon and what’s coming next. I could see the price erosion that was starting to happen.

Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 1)

Not all high impact businesses need to go from 0 to $100 million in 5 to 7 years. 

NOVICA has built a tremendously important, high impact social enterprise that did $30 million in 20 years. It’s a fantastic achievement.

From eBay Seller to Software Entrepreneur: Seller Labs CEO Paul Johnson (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the specifics of that business in terms of metrics. How many transactions were you doing?

Paul Johnson: This is a long time ago. I’ll see if I can remember. We started off with a $1,000 or $2,000 order. Guitars are a high-ticket item. We would sell them for $200 to $1,000 per guitar.

From eBay Seller to Software Entrepreneur: Seller Labs CEO Paul Johnson (Part 1)

Paul started as an eBay seller and then developed software to help other sellers sell online. 

A classic case study of an entrepreneur solving problems he faced himself and building a business based on deep domain knowledge.

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from New Jersey: Suuchi Ramesh, CEO of Suuchi (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much did you do in 2018 in product revenue?

Suuchi Ramesh: It was about 10% to 15% of our revenue at that point. We only started commercializing towards the end of the year.

Sramana Mitra: How did that split change in 2019?

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from New Jersey: Suuchi Ramesh, CEO of Suuchi (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the period where you’re still bootstrapping with a paycheck with this network of factories. What prompted you to quit your job and feel comfortable enough to go full-time on this?

Suuchi Ramesh: Within six months, we had half a million in bookings. That was validation. It wasn’t profitable, but the net burn wasn’t crazy. It was driving itself forward. I saw the opportunity. We just didn’t commercialize the digital solution early on because we had to build the features. That had to be informed by what we understood. We had to do that first.

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from New Jersey: Suuchi Ramesh, CEO of Suuchi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Where is the domain knowledge for supply chain coming from in your team?

Suuchi Ramesh: My domain knowledge with supply chain is with respect to the data piece of it. Then of course I had the opportunity to study supply chain from a data standpoint with the companies that we had sold predictive data solutions to.