Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 3)

Vaclav Muchna: The three of us started again. I kept 20% and they both got 30%. We started again without really knowing what to do next. One customer came and said that they would like us to develop a software that would secure printing. They wanted to remove 200 desktop inkjet printers and install 20 shared network printers. The problem was that if you print something on a network printer, you have a problem with data protection.

They wanted us to make a system where documents would not print unless you go and swipe your badge on the printer. We developed that and thought that it was interesting. We worked for that customer so we knew that the industry was going towards removing these inkjet printers and work with centralized >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a little bit about some of the nitty-gritty processes. What year did you start Inspyrus?

Nilay Banker: I started Inspyrus in 2008.

Sramana Mitra: You said you started by consulting. How long did you operate this company in a consulting services mode that got you the opportunity to understand the problem at a deep level?

Nilay Banker: We did consulting services for about two and a half years.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers did that expose you to? >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year are we in now?

Vaclav Muchna: That was 2000. It was a month after my 20th birthday. We started the company together. We really didn’t have any vision, we just wanted to be rich and famous. We wanted to succeed and we had no idea how. We had no education. We had no background.

The only thing we knew was that we are not afraid to work. We did different things. We wanted to participate in projects and build something. We had no idea what. What happened was we were often hired as developers to participate in a project that was funded by a business angel. We were paid >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay at Oracle?

Nilay Banker: I was at Oracle for 10 years. On the first day of my 11th year, I decided it was enough. I had a lot of fun. I actually had a great opportunity to work with Larry Ellison for an extended period of time. At that time, I was responsible for the development of oracle.com for our portal product. I got to meet with Larry Ellison on a weekly basis.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? What’s the next career move?

Nilay Banker: That’s when I decided that I need to figure out how things happen on the other side, which is not the software provider but more of a software >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker (Part 1)

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

We’ve shared many Bootstrapping Using Services case studies with you here, as well as in the book on that topic. This one is particularly interesting because of the absolutely awesome business model that Nilay and his team have implemented. Read on!

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

Nilay Banker: I’m from India, born and brought up in Ahmedabad, which used to be a sleepy town when I was born and growing up. It has now blossomed into a sprawling metro. It’s one of the five largest cities in India. I had a very interesting childhood. I grew up in a family of professionals. My father is an architect. My mother is a doctor. Pretty much, every person in my family is a professional with very few people who are not doctors. I consider myself a black sheep in the >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 1)

This is a wonderful story of a Czech entrepreneur, who at 22, at a time when his country was far from ready to support entrepreneurs, struggled through immense odds and has built a global business. Read on for inspiration and excellent lessons from the trenches.

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?

Vaclav Muchna: I was born in Czech Republic. I studied electronics in high school, which I didn’t like. It was not possible back then that would parlay into the software industry. Because the country was not so developed, access to technologies was limited. I really didn’t like the school. I was born and raised in Prague >>>

Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you now? What are the metrics of 2016?

Michael Hughes: We went public in the summer of 2016 on the London Stock Exchange. Our revenue for 2016 is about £12.8 million. We will actually be releasing our 2016 results in a couple of weeks. We have to do an announcement that our revenue is going to be above market expectations. We have a little bit over 2,200 enterprise customers. We sell to small and medium enterprises and a lot to private equity. We have a comical number of venture capital funds who are our customers.

In general business, we sell to everybody from Hooters to Subaru. It’s all over the place. We have big offices in London and here in San Francisco, and smaller >>>

Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Explain the business model a bit. Secondly, describe the competitive landscape. Who or what are you competing against and how?

Michael Hughes: We built up all these systems because we didn’t have any money and it was all we could do. The business model that we followed is very much the same business model that is followed by most of our competitors. In the collaboration space, you’ve all kinds of competitors – Microsoft, Cisco, and now Amazon.

Still the big players are the historical PTT’s. There are several large independent, more audio-oriented players such as Premier Global. The guys that we >>>