From Solo Entrepreneur to $65 Million in Revenue: Brazilian Entrepreneur Daniel Scandian, CEO of MadeiraMadeira (Part 1)

Daniel had fully validated his business to significant revenue before going to investors. The result is spectacular! Read on…

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?

Daniel Scandian: I’m from Rio de Janeiro. I started my career a little bit different from other entrepreneurs. I was 14 years old when I started with Go Carting. My dream was to be a Formula One driver. I won the Formula 3 South America in 2001. That’s why I started late because I could get sponsors to go to GP2. I then came >>>

Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of Firstimpression.io (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Once you made these vital switches, what happened? In terms of revenue, how did you do in 2015?

Roy Peleg: We ended with gross revenue of $1.3 million. In the month of December, we generated $185,000. The trajectory was great. We quadrupled the revenue in 2015. Then we took on a few more employees. We actually raised the bar even more. When it came to publishers, a million to two million page views a month was considered an adequate publisher to pursue. Most of 2015 and 2016 we focused on publishers with 5 million page views a month. In 2016, we actually tripled the revenue. In 2016, I’m talking about $3.9 million in gross revenue and for the first time, we were profitable. Our current revenue run rate is more than $6 million a year.

Sramana Mitra: This is $6 million in gross revenue right? Your revenue is more like $2 million. >>>

Building Multiple Bootstrapped Education Software Companies: Lane Rankin, CEO of Illuminate Education (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn? Was the threshold one salesperson per state? How were you calculating your expansion strategy?

Lane Rankin: Just about every time we would go and meet with the district, we would win a sale. If we have a presentation, 80% of the time we are winning the business. We were growing so fast that we literally weren’t doing any marketing. It was mostly inbound calls and information.

The problem I was having was trying to make sure that my underlying infrastructure could handle the amount of business we were bringing in. We were always right on the edge of not being able to support the customers out there. Customer support and implementation are very important to us. Those times involved 20-hour days. >>>

Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Was this was a 3-month acceleration program?

Roy Peleg: No, it was a 4-month program.

Sramana Mitra: Then you went back to Israel?

Roy Peleg: Yes. The business started growing a bit, but not too much. With the feedback that we got and the additional focus on our business model, we gradually added more people to the team. Every time the revenue increased, we just took on another employee. We were breaking even every month. >>>

Building Multiple Bootstrapped Education Software Companies: Lane Rankin, CEO of Illuminate Education (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: We are now at the point where you bought some portions of your previous company that you bought to Harcourt. You’re now ready to start off on your own in 2009. What happens next?

Lane Rankin: We started over in 2009 with some pieces of a new platform. We had started a new platform to replace the older platform that we had built in 2002. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt didn’t understand what they had, no matter how many times I explained it to them. Because they were hurting for money, they were happy to sell me back that piece. We started over that year with $150,000 in revenue and grew quickly. Today, we’ll cross $34 million in revenue in 2016 and be pushing $50 million in 2017. >>>

Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You were doing this full-time? You didn’t have a full-time or part-time job at this point?

Roy Peleg: Right. My sister was looking for a job. I decided to hire her full-time. When she went on her honeymoon, I started to look for someone to replace her and also found our first developer. A month later when it was becoming difficult to manage the developer, I found my CTO.

Sramana Mitra: Were these people taking salaries? How did you find them?

Roy Peleg: I was paying salaries out of my own pocket. I convinced the developer to take a lower salary and gradually increased during the year. He probably >>>

Building Multiple Bootstrapped Education Software Companies: Lane Rankin, CEO of Illuminate Education (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You financed the other company using the resources of the first company?

Lane Rankin: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: If you look at revenues and stuff, how was the first company doing? What was the trajectory of the second company?

Lane Rankin: Our turnover was around $2 million to $3 million in the first company. I sold the second company in 2007. At that point, our revenue was about $7 million.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a little bit about the second company and its business. What were you doing there? >>>

Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where I would really understand the difference is if you can tell me what you were able to do in terms of CPMs. I’ve had a blog for 10 years, so I know exactly how blog advertising and ad networks have evolved. The CPMs are real shit. If you tell me that what you did has really impacted the CPM, that would actually give me more concrete understanding of what’s going on here.

Roy Peleg: We have done a few things along the way to improve the revenue. The CPMs you could expect from AdSense at that time were around a dollar to dollar and a half.

Sramana Mitra: A dollar to dollar and a half was what AdSense was generating? >>>