Bootstrapping to Inflection: Dan Stewart, CEO of Happy Grasshopper (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When you decided to shut that down, what was the next move?

Dan Stewart: I went to work for one of my yellow pages clients. I became a construction manager of all things. That was a great experience because I got to sell millions of dollars worth of projects. In the process, I learned to manage those projects and become a better business owner. That led to starting my geotechnical contracting company which kept me busy for a long time. That’s where we won all the Inc magazine awards.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Dan Stewart: We incorporated in 2000. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: James Kane, CEO of RWS (Part 1)

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

We’re big believers in Bootstrapping Using Services, as you know. Here’s yet another story of an entrepreneur who has scaled to over $10 million in revenue using the method.

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?

James Kane: I grew up in a very small town in far northern New York. It’s a college town of about 2,000 people. My father was a university professor. He taught Mechanical Engineering at Clarkson University. >>>

Bootstrapping to Inflection: Dan Stewart, CEO of Happy Grasshopper (Part 1)

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

Dan Stewart is a 1M1M entrepreneur. Read how he has navigated his way to an inflection point that has brought him to the cusp of 4x growth in 2017.

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?

Dan Stewart: My family moved around quite a lot as I was growing up. I rarely stayed in a school for more than a year. That took me from West Virginia and Chicago, down to Florida. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Help me understand with a use case. Let’s say Uber wants to go global using your technology, what specifically happens? How does the technology help Uber go global?

Moshe Vaknin: Let’s say Uber goes to India. Then they’d say, “I’d like to have 300,000 users in the next six months.” With our technology and our inventory in India, we can predict and tell Uber, “Yes, we can deliver 300,000 users but you have to pay us $2 per install. That’s the price that makes sense to drive us the right inventory so we can analyze and drive your 300,000 users.” We do this kind of setting up of expectations.

Once you set up expectations, we start to deploy all the messaging that Uber wants. Our recommendation engine and predictive algorithms will recommend >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 5)

Moshe Vaknin: In the beginning of 2013, we did a shift. We decided that we wanted to focus on B2B. We didn’t change the core but rather than having an app, we said, “Let’s get to publishers who have a lot of users. Through their content, we’ll recommend to users.” Earlier, the dream was to build my own channel of inventory. That’s not a sustainable concept.

Sramana Mitra: It’s very expensive to build that kind of audience.

Moshe Vaknin: Expensive, and there’s no stickiness. Facebook has done a good job but with just discovering apps, it’s not enough. It was a pretty good shift. It was not easy because not enough data was available. We had to make the technology much more sophisticated to be able to make the recommendations to the users. When you promote an app, the ROI is very challenging. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: That brings us to 2012?

Moshe Vaknin: Yes, to the end of 2011. Then in 2012, I’m still in mobile. I knew that mobile apps is going to be a big market. I knew mobile apps were going to be a part of our lives. It was not easy at that time. I remember going to one of the investors. He told me, “Eventually, iPhone will become just another game device.” People didn’t really believe that you can do more than that. At the beginning of 2012, the world was still very skeptical about mobile apps.

Sramana Mitra: By 2012, mobile apps were mainstream. They were taking off. What was the pushback in 2012? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the next move?

Moshe Vaknin: I co-founded a company called CheckM8. I did like the world of the Internet and I didn’t want to move away from that. I wanted to stay in that field. I realized that I know the ecosystem. We built a rich media platform. When everybody was doing banners, we came up with dynamic advertising. We registered a patent on it. At that time, dynamic advertising was a pretty big story. It was pretty easy to get funded.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, because you already had one exit.

Moshe Vaknin: Exactly. I got big funds from Japan. It was a pretty good experience – good and bad actually. One thing though is that I gave too much control >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You stayed for seven years at Bell Labs until 1997. What happens after that?

Moshe Vaknin: After Bell Labs, I decided to move back to Israel. During that time, I got married and had two kids. I applied for a job in Israel. I was employed by a company called VOCAL Tech, which is a company that invented the VoIP.

Sramana Mitra: I remember the company.

Moshe Vaknin: Yes. I joined them and spent two years helping them manage their products. It was a shift for me from spending many years as a research engineer and moving to VOCAL Tech on the product side. I worked there for two years. Those days were the beginning of the bubble days. I decided, with a >>>