Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Florida: SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When did you get your first manufacturer customer?

Jared Shusterman: We got the first one who really helped us understand the beauty of the model in December.

Sramana Mitra: December of 2006?

Jared Shusterman: No, 2005. That’s how we discovered that this was a much more interesting model than the original model that I started with. At that point, the whole idea changed and I hired our first employee in January. I remember everyone thinking I was crazy, because I had only so much money to spend. He’s still with us today. He’s our CTO. >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Florida: SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What’s the next major milestone? Put this in chronological order for me. Where are we now?

Jared Shusterman: We are going into December 2005. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a jewelry manufacturer. I talked about what I was doing in terms of building marketing programs. He said, “Interesting. I like what you’re doing. What ends up happening is they’ll buy products from me and if they can’t sell it, they end up returning it. I’m going to give you a list of your customers. Would you help my retailers advertise the products that I’m selling? On top of that, we’ll pay for up to 50% of anything you guys spend.” >>>

Building a Two-Sided Marketplace: LawnStarter CRO Ryan Farley (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is the next inflection point or strategic move that you made that gave you the next level of growth?

Ryan Farley: We didn’t expand markets because we wanted to focus on the core customer experience. The following spring, we went to a total of eight cities. All winter was spent in recruiting the supply for those cities and building the technology to automate a lot of the stuff that we were still doing with humans behind the scene. That was when it started to feel like a real company. It was the first time of having a Board as well. That was the next phase of the company. >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Florida: SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What prompted you to go dig into jewelry? What was the trigger for jewelry?

Jared Shusterman: We had a family friend who who was a consultant for jewelry retailers. I was lucky enough to spend some time with him and actually attended a show with him. I was able to speak to a lot of the retailers at the show as we pitched our concept.

Rather than going back and starting a full-time job, we felt that we had something. This was around the time that Constant Contact was starting to get popular with email marketing. I moved back in with my parents. For the first four to five months, I >>>

Building a Two-Sided Marketplace: LawnStarter CRO Ryan Farley (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Did you raise funds at the Techstars demo day or did you raise funds afterwards?

Ryan Farley: Most of it was afterwards. We pieced together a round of a lot of individual angel investors. We didn’t have any VC funds in the million-dollar round. One of the 20 angel investors came from demo day. The rest came from our network or the Tech Stars network. Demo day is a great event, but it’s not like when you do your presentation, investors come running to you. That’s when the work begins; not when it ends.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise at this point? >>>

Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Florida: SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman (Part 1)

SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman shared his wonderful bootstrapping story with me 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?

Jared Shusterman: I was born in Miami, Florida. I’m one of the few South Florida natives. I grew up in a middle class family that had a very heavy focus on education. After I graduated high school, I went to the University of Virginia. I got a Bachelors degree with a Finance and Marketing concentration. Shortly after that, I moved out to San Francisco and worked for an >>>

Building a Two-Sided Marketplace: LawnStarter CRO Ryan Farley (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You were doing Tech Stars in Austin?

Ryan Farley: Yes. We were with 10 other companies that were all just incredible. It was something that we hadn’t seen before within entrepreneurial circles. We felt like, “How the heck did we get in?” The program was an awesome experience.

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn at Tech Stars?

Ryan Farley: A lot. They almost take your focus away from the company a little bit to teach you general business skills like sales, >>>

Building a Two-Sided Marketplace: LawnStarter CRO Ryan Farley (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you launch it in a particular geography?

Ryan Farley: We did it in one county in the Washington DC metro area.

Sramana Mitra: Is that where you’re from?

Ryan Farley: I’m from close by.

Sramana Mitra: That was your local county. >>>