Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 2)

Adam Schwartz: While all this was happening, the woman I was working with had some interaction with that PR agency. After exhanging ideas, we came upon the pain point of being a sustainable fashion designer. There was a sustainable fashion movement. A lot of people in fashion wanted to make sustainable choices, but everything that came after making those choices was difficult, specifically, sourcing the actual textiles sustainably. If we can be a resource to fashion designers and brands around how to and where to source the textiles that they need to create their stuff, that would be an interesting business. That would reduce some of the friction to helping the fashion industry become more sustainable. We started that company together. It was called Source4Style. It was a B2B platform where fashion designers could source and actually purchase textiles from suppliers around the world in varying degrees of sustainability. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Wowza CEO David Stubenvoll (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you now? How big is this company? Where are you going from here? What does the market landscape look like?

David Stubenvoll: We’re 115 people. We’re north of $20 million in revenue. We introduced a number of new products. Up until last year, all we sold was Wowza streaming engine. We sold it in a number of different ways but that was our only product. Believe it or not, we have 19,000 customers worldwide. We deliver well over 350,000 hours of live content a day. That’s actually just on the transcoding side. >>>

Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 1)

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

In building a business, savvy entrepreneurs always look for that moment when the  business hits an inflection point, and you actually understand what levers are driving that growth. Adam’s story captures his long search for this coveted point and his eventual discovery.

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

Adam Schwartz: I’m from Massachusetts. I grew up about 30 miles northwest of Boston right along the 128 tech route there. I was raised in a small town. Actually, the technology in the Boston area is what brought my family there. My father was in semiconductors. That always had an influence on me, but I grew up in a serene forest-like place.

Sramana Mitra: I’ve lived in that area. I went to Smith College for undergraduate. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Wowza CEO David Stubenvoll (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: At this point, your main customer acquisition strategy was through this newsletter and the community that you had gotten yourself into, or was there any other kind of customer acquisition strategy in swing at this point?

David Stubenvoll: It was an email mailing list. It wasn’t a newsletter. We also attended trade shows. By late 2007, we started doing some keyword advertising. Even early on, we went to shows like IBC and NAB. We were completely inundated at those shows. In December of 2007, we went live on Amazon Web Services as well.

Sramana Mitra: How was the business tracking at this point? What were the revenue metrics that you were hitting? How were you growing and was there financing involved? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Wowza CEO David Stubenvoll (Part 5)

David Stubenvoll: What we found out was that a lot of people felt the same way about that media server product. People started to beg to buy our server. In August of 2006, we decided to turn this into a media server software company. That resulted in, what is today, Wowza Media Systems.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a significant pivot.

David Stubenvoll: It was a big pivot for sure.

Sramana Mitra: When you were getting these pings from people who wanted to buy your media server product, were they outlining what they were willing to pay to buy that product? Did you have a sense of what the business model and the pricing model would look like?

David Stubenvoll: There was a very strong incumbent product in the market. We were able to look at their product. My theory has always been if you want to >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Philippe d’Offay, CEO of PMD (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about revenue ramp. You talked about hitting $1 million in 2009. How did the business accelerate from thereon? What were the drivers?

Philippe d’Offay: We’re a four-time Inc 5000 nominee. That is one distinction that we’ve had. Last year, we generated $6.4 million in revenue. From 2009 to 2015, there was a six-fold increase in revenue and a two-fold increase in profit. Of course, we’re a recurring revenue model, so keeping those customers happy allows us to start the year with new revenue on top of revenue from new customers. We’ve always been obsessed with customer support and providing a great service.

The other thing we found was that eventually, we got so big that nobody was able to keep up with their customers anymore. It just got to the point where each of us had 500 or more doctors who knew us by name. It got to the point where everybody was spread thin. Everybody was trying to do all of their duties. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Wowza CEO David Stubenvoll (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: It was the height of the bubble. The market was really crazy. It’s no longer possible, thankfully. But at that time, it was possible and a lot of crazy things were going on at that time. Did you blow through all those dollars and not make it?

David Stubenvoll: Pretty much. We had actually solid routing technologies that were also able to determine an organization’s hierarchy based out of the communication that was taking place. In the end, it was too early and the VCs were too impatient. This was the time when you’re being lambasted at your Board meeting for not spending $40,000 a month on PR.

Sramana Mitra: Then you moved on.

David Stubenvoll: I moved on and helped a friend out who had a little investment bank for a while. Then I ran Mergers and Acquisitions for Adobe. >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Philippe d’Offay, CEO of PMD (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What you described is a very interesting organizing principle for organizational behaviour.

Philippe d’Offay: It was fascinating. I’m one of those people who can’t just stop thinking about identifying the solution to the problems.

Sramana Mitra: When you figured this out, you were able to put back the right dynamics in place?

Philippe d’Offay: Yes. Another really interesting thing happened as well. The people that we had hired in the past and the people who worked really well in that small environment were not the same people that we had to hire as we were growing. I call it the soldier mercenary type of environment. Earlier, we had these people who would just do whatever you told them to do.

Then all of a sudden, those people had to decide if they were willing to report to somebody else. Some of them were willing and some. So we >>>