Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 7)

Mitch Russo: The dot-com bust then hit. It was April of 2000. The stock market started to do what it’s doing right now. It was just crazy. I realized what was happening. Our customers were going out of business. When the dust settled a year later, we had lost 30% of the furniture retailers. Another 30% of the furniture manufacturers had gone out of business. We basically knew that the end was near. I wound it down. We found a buyer. >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Can you name some of the locations that you specifically went after in this mode where there was enough technical talent that you were looking for but were also low cost?

Cedric Saverese: There wasn’t a particular location that I was aiming for. I was aiming for US, mostly from a timezone perspective. I wanted to be able to work with people in normal business hours. We did hire people in Europe. Usually it doesn’t work very well. Now we have people in Japan, Philippines, and India, but it’s because they’re working with customers that are in those timezones. Early on, I wanted people to be in my timezone to be able to work with them effectively.

Sramana Mitra: What parts of the United States were you hiring from? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When did you leave Sage?

Mitch Russo: 1998.

Sramana Mitra: Then you came back to Boston. What happens next? >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch to team. You started as a solo entrepreneur?

Cedric Saverese: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you carry on as a solo entrepreneur?

Cedric Saverese: Two to three years, while it was a side project. When I did it full-time, I hired the first person within the next few months.

Sramana Mitra: What was the position that you hired? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 5)

Mitch Russo: As I said, tech support was starting to run very long waits. A woman called and announced that she is the head of the legal technology division for the Los Angeles Bar Association. She was having terrible problems. She said our software crashed her computer and that we better get somebody out there right away. We only sell for $99. I think by that time, it was $199. To fly out and fix somebody’s computer wasn’t economical, but this was an important person.

I made a crazy decision to call another customer in Los Angeles and who I know was a fan of our software. >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you started, which competitors did you see most in deals?

Cedric Saverese: When I started, there was not a lot of competitive deals. We didn’t have a sales team. It was more like, “Here’s a product. If you want it, buy it.” We didn’t have a lot of visibility into our customers’ purchasing process. We didn’t know who else they were talking to. At that time, it’s not like there were a lot of other options. The competition was developers and people building it themselves.

Sramana Mitra: Did you raise any money? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 4)

Mitch Russo: We started running classified ads in Legal Tech and other journals. We were tracking these very carefully. If we spend $50 on an ad and if we got six or seven orders, we knew that the ad was great. We just kept doing it every week. We knew what was working and what was not. It was nine months after the company had started.

In the first month of the company’s history, I went to a show called COMDEX. >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? You’ve got this hundred or so customers. You’ve got some validation. Were you ready to quit the job?

Cedric Savarese: Yes, we moved to a slightly bigger town but were still in the same area. I was hoping to find other people to help me grow the company. At this point, just by talking to existing customers and getting their input and feedback, I had seen some demand for Salesforce. I was vaguely aware of it, but it wasn’t as huge as it is today.

Salesforce, today, is probably the largest SaaS company in the world. I had some customers who talked to me about it. I looked >>>