Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year was this happening?

Mikko Valimaki: This happened in 2008.

Sramana Mitra: The first order of business was to get an open source product going right?

Mikko Valimaki: We thought this whole thing through and we figured out that it cannot be a big enough business for us to grow this company really big. One of the first things we did was figuring out a company name. This current name Tuxera was launched in 2009. At the same time, we did two other things. After spending several months with Microsoft, we finally made this background IP license with Microsoft so that we could legally develop Microsoft filesystems. >>>

Building a SaaS Company with Operational Discipline: Betterworks CEO Kris Duggan (Part 1)

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

Kleiner invested $15 million in Bettelworks on a concept. It’s an unusual financing that only experienced entrepreneurs can pull off. Read how Kris is building the company.

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?

Kris Duggan: I was born in Australia. My parents are Australian. When I was five, we moved to Texas because my dad had an opportunity to relocate with the chemical company that he worked for. I grew up in Houston and actually went back to Australia for a year but then, ultimately, moved to California for most of high school and college. That was in Southern California. About 15 years ago, I moved up to Northern California. >>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera (Part 1)

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

In our effort to bring you stories from the global startup ecosystem, here we introduce you to a wonderful success story from Finland.

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 circumstances?

Mikko Valimaki: I’m a 39-year-old guy from Finland. I did my schooling in Finland. I did, however, study in Berkeley in the United States and was exposed to the American culture. I’ve never worked for any big company. I always started my own stuff. I had already developed my own computer games back in the 1990s while at high school. I tried to sell those.

After university, I tried to found my own company. I tried several things. We had one database startup back in 2001. The product is still selling but that broke up perhaps because of personal issues with the other founders. That was one of my first success stories. There were some other companies as >>>

From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is your customer acquisition strategy? Were you basically calling these people who have motivational speaking or other kinds of training programs and just direct-selling them into your technology?

Brad Lea: Yes, pretty much. We would find and select a target and camp outside their office. We would knock on doors and wait until we got in front of them.

Sramana Mitra: Getting to that $1 million milestone, what percentage of your revenue was in the revenue share mode and what percentage was in the per user pricing model?

Brad Lea: 100% was in the revenue share mode back then.

Sramana Mitra: So in the beginning, you basically had to give people the software and convince them to get on the fee model. >>>

From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You were selling this particular training to car dealerships, and that became the core business for about a year.

Brad Lea: Yes, I had about 50 to 60 dealerships subscribing to use my system. I realized that that recurring revenue was definitely what I wanted to focus on. What happened was, as I continued to try and sell my training, the dealerships that I would approach had other trainers that they preferred or already used. I was having a hard time getting any scalability past 50. I kept hearing certain names as my competition, “We already use Greg Cardone.” I couldn’t convince them that I was better. I was finding a lot of no’s and was not able to grow my business. >>>

From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of where you started the business. I’d like to understand how you built the company step by step. You said you started the company by actually delivering your own course in the beginning. How, then, did you do that business of delivering your own course? Tell us a little bit of the nuances of building that business first. Then we’ll get to the SaaS business in a minute.

Brad Lea: I just kept going. I didn’t take no for an answer. It took about three to four years to figure out that I wanted to get into software. For three or four years, I was just out knocking on doors, getting behind on my bills, and sacrificing any kind of financial stability for entrepreneurship. Everyone said it wasn’t going to happen. Nobody believed that anyone was going to want to train online versus in person. It was just knocking on a lot of doors and trying to convince people. If I could help an entrepreneur, the help that I would give would be to not give up. More people will give up right before they hit a win. >>>

From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the business model? How do people pay you? Is that a SaaS kind of a business model?

Brad Lea: Exactly, Software-as-a-Service. Usually, we will charge a little bit to get it set up and created. Then depending on the license type that you have, it will cost either X amount per user or some sort of a revenue share.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of denominations are we talking about?

Brad Lea: I would say, on average, $1.50 a user, or revenue share. We do a revenue share arrangement with some of our clients, where if they make $1,000, we take a small sliver of that. We have clients doing several millions a month to clients doing $10,000 a month. It’s a wide spectrum there.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of learning does your most successful client deliver on this platform? >>>

From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT (Part 1)

Brad knows how to sell. Read how he turned that skill in to a $20M revenue business with very little formal education.

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?

Brad Lea: I was born in Cottage Grove, Oregon in about 1969. My journey began right there.

Sramana Mitra: Did you grow up in that community?

Brad Lea: Yes, I grew up there until I was 14 years old.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that? Where did you move to and how did the journey evolve? >>>