Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Udupi, Karnataka: Rohith Bhat’s Exhilarating Journey with Robosoft (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: These were projects that Apple gave you to build these apps?

Rohith Bhat: We had customers of our own. We built it for them. Apple gave us the SDK.

Sramana Mitra: This was very early. My question is how did you find clients to build products for the Apple App Store?

Rohith Bhat: Because it was new, some of our clients also felt that this might be something that might become big someday. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Udupi, Karnataka: Rohith Bhat’s Exhilarating Journey with Robosoft (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenue levels were you operating at?

Rohith Bhat: We were still at a million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: You were steady at a million dollars from 1998 to about 2002.

Rohith Bhat: In 1998, we were much smaller. By 2002 to 2003, we hit a million dollars in revenue. We were steady at that level for the next two years. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Udupi, Karnataka: Rohith Bhat’s Exhilarating Journey with Robosoft (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Chronologically, we are in the 1996 to 1997 timeframe?

Rohith Bhat: Yes. From 1996 to 1998, we worked for, at least, five to six companies. I have not met any of these folks from the United States. I was in Bombay. Getting talent for my startup was now becoming a little bit difficult because I had to compete with bigger companies. I figured that my customers didn’t bother where I am because they didn’t bother to meet me in person. It didn’t make any difference if I was in Bombay or in another part of the country.

That’s when I decided that maybe I should go back to my hometown because back then, Internet had just come into my hometown. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Udupi, Karnataka: Rohith Bhat’s Exhilarating Journey with Robosoft (Part 1)

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Rohith started a services company in his hometown – a small town on the west coast of Karnataka, India. Fifteen years later, the company is generating $18 million in revenue and has raised two sizable rounds of VC funding. I found the story exhilarating!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Rohith Bhat: I was born in Udupi, India. It’s a small town on the west coast of the country. Then I went to the local school and >>>

Building a Robust Niche Business: FilmTrack CEO Jason Kassin (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you raise in 2013?

Jason Kassin: Our Series A was $20 million.

Sramana Mitra: How many companies did you acquire?

Jason Kassin: We acquired two companies. The first one was a company called Jaguar. In between, we acquired a third company, but that was of a slightly different complexion. It was a smaller acquisition that involved another raise where the >>>

Building a Robust Niche Business: FilmTrack CEO Jason Kassin (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: A couple of questions. When did you hit the million dollar mark from the point you started? What metrics did you raise funding with?

Jason Kassin: I’m not exactly sure, but it was probably around 2007 that we hit that threshold. At that time, we didn’t think it was some magical threshold. The metrics that we used when we received our funding was what we had booked as recurring revenue at that time and what we were forecasting to be the recurring revenue based on a certain retention rate of the current customers and new customers coming on board. >>>

Building a Robust Niche Business: FilmTrack CEO Jason Kassin (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: After the client from which you identified the business opportunity of turning this into a product, who was your next client? Once you turn it into a product, how long did it take you to start acquiring actual clients?

Jason Kassin: I think the number two client was a company in Amsterdam, which was interesting. Almost immediately after the launch of our system, we were exposed to a non-US centric approach to the business. That was very helpful in the way we contemplated things like handling multiple currencies. That was pretty early on when we were exposed to additional companies >>>

Building a Robust Niche Business: FilmTrack CEO Jason Kassin (Part 3)

Jason Kassin: Through a series of events, we ended up getting a large investment from a private equity group in 2013. That transformed FilmTrack from a small startup to a much larger organization that was funded by a private equity group and was able to grow substantially in the last three years. That investment, we hadn’t even contemplated at that point, was the turbo charge.

Actually, one of our clients was very much taken in by what we had done. He saw something in our software that we, >>>