Successful Pivots: Anthony Ferry, CEO of PriceSpider (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the concept around which you started this company?

Anthony Ferry: When we formed the company, it was a traditional consulting company where we wanted to build solutions for various industries. We also wanted to build software products and have our feet in the fire out there to understand what the needs of the industry were at that time to come up with those ideas. Consulting business was doing very well and growing very fast.

Sramana Mitra: What area were you consulting in? I am gathering that you are telling a story of

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Successful Pivots: Anthony Ferry, CEO of PriceSpider (Part 1)

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

Anthony has navigated PriceSpider with some astute strategic moves. Read on to learn more. Strategic maneuverings of real entrepreneurs, by the way, are great learning opportunities.

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?

Anthony Ferry: I was born in Inglewood,California. I haven’t strayed very far from there. I moved down south a little bit into South Orange County in the mid-70’s all the way through high school. In college, I ventured just a little bit up north to a local >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Can you name some of the locations that you specifically went after in this mode where there was enough technical talent that you were looking for but were also low cost?

Cedric Saverese: There wasn’t a particular location that I was aiming for. I was aiming for US, mostly from a timezone perspective. I wanted to be able to work with people in normal business hours. We did hire people in Europe. Usually it doesn’t work very well. Now we have people in Japan, Philippines, and India, but it’s because they’re working with customers that are in those timezones. Early on, I wanted people to be in my timezone to be able to work with them effectively.

Sramana Mitra: What parts of the United States were you hiring from? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When did you leave Sage?

Mitch Russo: 1998.

Sramana Mitra: Then you came back to Boston. What happens next? >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch to team. You started as a solo entrepreneur?

Cedric Saverese: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you carry on as a solo entrepreneur?

Cedric Saverese: Two to three years, while it was a side project. When I did it full-time, I hired the first person within the next few months.

Sramana Mitra: What was the position that you hired? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 5)

Mitch Russo: As I said, tech support was starting to run very long waits. A woman called and announced that she is the head of the legal technology division for the Los Angeles Bar Association. She was having terrible problems. She said our software crashed her computer and that we better get somebody out there right away. We only sell for $99. I think by that time, it was $199. To fly out and fix somebody’s computer wasn’t economical, but this was an important person.

I made a crazy decision to call another customer in Los Angeles and who I know was a fan of our software. >>>

Solo Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and a Virtual Company: Cedric Savarese, CEO of FormAssembly (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you started, which competitors did you see most in deals?

Cedric Saverese: When I started, there was not a lot of competitive deals. We didn’t have a sales team. It was more like, “Here’s a product. If you want it, buy it.” We didn’t have a lot of visibility into our customers’ purchasing process. We didn’t know who else they were talking to. At that time, it’s not like there were a lot of other options. The competition was developers and people building it themselves.

Sramana Mitra: Did you raise any money? >>>

Bootstrapping to Exit: TimeSlips CEO Mitch Russo (Part 4)

Mitch Russo: We started running classified ads in Legal Tech and other journals. We were tracking these very carefully. If we spend $50 on an ad and if we got six or seven orders, we knew that the ad was great. We just kept doing it every week. We knew what was working and what was not. It was nine months after the company had started.

In the first month of the company’s history, I went to a show called COMDEX. >>>