Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you fire the CEO that you brought on?

Ashik Ahmed: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How did that go?

Ashik Ahmed: Not pretty. I doubted myself whether I would be capable of being the CEO of this company. I didn’t even know what the job description of a CEO looked like back then. My lesson out of that is, although I had to fire him, I had failed in hiring the right person. If I want something, I have to go get it. I can’t rely on somebody else to make that happen for me. >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You’ve done all this organically. Right from the beginning, you didn’t raise any money.

Heidi Jannenga: Yes, we are huge proponents of bootstrapping. We have been building it for four years. We’re profitable. Within two years, we were at a million dollar run rate. They passed the Affordable Care Act around the same time we launched. That was a huge compliance impetus for the industry to now become much more aware of electronic medical records. Even though physical therapists didn’t receive incentives from the government to adopt an electronic record, it was “the rising tide raises all boats” situation.

Physicians were getting incentives. They were adopting EMRs very rapidly. Professionals couldn’t be sending handwritten >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: From a vertical point of view, it was all in the hospitality area?

Ashik Ahmed: That’s correct – all restaurants, bars, and hotels. That was the industry we were focusing on.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers are we talking?

Ashik Ahmed: By the end of 2013, I believe we only had 150.

Sramana Mitra: These are small businesses? You were working with small businesses? >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about customer acquisition. What did you start with? What worked and what did you settle into as your primary customer acquisition strategy?

Heidi Jannenga: It’s a funny story actually. We built our own website from the very beginning. Back in 2008, there was not a lot of competition in SEO and keywords. It was not something that people in the physical therapy software space even understood. The bar was low. Part of my co-founder’s background was building enterprise software platforms and understanding the SEO strategy. When we built our first website, we incorporated a lot of that information. >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This is an Entrepreneur Journeys story. I’m going to help you tell that story as a journey. You started with this concept back in 2008 with your co-founder. What was the first thing that you did?

Ashik Ahmed: Coming up with the name. To be honest, I resigned from Aero-Care in February 2007 because I believed I’d achieved what I wanted to achieve. I actually wanted to go and work for Apple or Google where I could get some industry experience. But Steve came up with the idea of taking it to the world.  >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do this story a bit more as a journey. What year did you face the problem that you needed some sort of a system for managing your physical therapy practice?

Heidi Jannenga: It was an ongoing problem from 2003 to 2008 where the company that I was working with had promised that they would be transitioning to some sort of a documentation system. It never happened. We were using transcription and dictation.

Finally, it was a decision, “I’m running these practices now. I want to take this issue head on. I think we can find a solution to solve >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 1)

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

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later is the 1M/1M mantra. Ashik Ahmed tells his story of bootstrapping to $10 Million before raising $25 Million in the first external financing.

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

Ashik Ahmed: I was born in Bangladesh. In 1997, my whole family migrated to Melbourne in Australia. I did my high school education as well as university in Melbourne. Then we moved to Sydney where I started working for my co-founder. My co-founder >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Arizona: Heidi Jannenga, Co-Founder of WebPT (Part 1)

Heidi and her co-founder have bootstrapped WebPT to significant traction, then raised a small angel round. 2016 revenue was $40 million. The company has sold 51% stake to private equity and the founders have already experienced significant liquidity. Excellent story of a female entrepreneur who doesn’t make excuses. She just executes.

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?

Heidi Jannenga: I was born in Texas to two immigrant parents. My dad immigrated from Austria and my mom is a first-generation American born in Hawaii. She’s Japanese. We moved to Winter Park, Florida when I was six years old. I was a multi-sport athlete in high school. I ended up playing basketball in college at UC Davis in Northern California. I injured my knee in my junior year. >>>