Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: While you were experimenting with lead generation and doing it on a shoestring experimentation mode, what kind of revenue level did you reach with that? Was that something that you used to bootstrap the new idea?

Sergio Furio: The reason why we were doing lead generation at that point was that it was cheaper. When it comes to the unit economics, the fact that the leads were not converting enough for the financial institutions meant that the revenues you were getting were very low. We were in a cost-per-acquisiton model.

The cost of acquiring that lead was pretty much the same. The revenue model didn’t make sense. You were spending the same in marketing. There was no >>>

Scaling an Energy Management Venture: Martin Manniche, CEO of Greenwave Systems (Part 1)

Martin is a serial entrepreneur with nine startups under his belt. This story traces his journey from Copenhagen to California with a focus on his latest venture Greenwave that has already scaled to over $50 million in revenue.

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?

Martin Manniche: I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I moved to the US 11 years ago. I’ve been leading companies as a CEO. I’ve also been >>>

Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You were finding people online who were looking for loans and connecting them to financial institutions.

Sergio Furio: At that point, it was even broader. We were looking for people looking for financial services in general. We were offering insurance, credit cards, and credit. We were capturing some basic information and doing some pre-qualification, and then sending those customers to financial institutions. The beauty of it is it was relatively inexpensive. It was about creating good content and having a good user interface. From an investment perspective, I didn’t need a ton of money.

The bad news happened a year after that. I realized that the model didn’t make sense. The reason was that the unit economics of lead generation in Latin America >>>

Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 1)

Companies are starting to scale in Latin America. In this story, we bring you a FinTech company’s journey from its bootstrapped beginnings to validation, venture financing, and scaling.

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

Sergio Furio: I’m Spanish. I graduated in 2000 in Business Administration. I spent five years in Deutsche Bank doing investment banking.

Sramana Mitra: In Spain? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What did you price the Ecwid product at?

Ruslan Fazlyev: The model back then was one free plan and one paid plan at $70. The pricing model is a bit different now.

Sramana Mitra: $70 a month?

Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes, it’s different now. Now we have premium offerings. There are paid plans at $15, $35, and $99 a month. We also monetize it through Ecwid payments. If you have Ecwid stores, we also enable our customers now with bundled payments. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You wanted to set the company for exit.

Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you go to look for financing?

Ruslan Fazlyev: I never really looked proactively for financing. The way it worked is, Ecwid was named as the hottest technology company in Russia after winning this competition by Google and Forbes in 2010. I had a lot of inbound interest. I just reacted on that inbound interest. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Not only did you have the platform but you were also offering the integrated consulting services to implement it.

Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes, that was the X-Cart approach but it was not good enough for some customers. Some customers asked, “Is there any way to integrate my store into my site without ever having to hire designers or pay any consulting services?” The answer back then was no. Even though there were some cloud platforms that enabled you to avoid all of the software hassle, but the problem was this store would have a look that was different from the rest of your website.

You would have to hire someone to customize the look of that, which is harder in cloud than with downloadable software. There was no solution for that. We >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Sylvana Caridi Coche, CEO of Gravity Pro (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What is the business now? Do you sell mostly licenses?

Sylvana Caridi Coche: I switched from 80% services and 20% license to 80% license and 20% services. The goal next year is to do more and more services.

Sramana Mitra: How many people do you have now?

Sylvana Caridi Coche: I have three employees.

Sramana Mitra: This license-selling is something that you can do with very few employees. How profitable is the business? >>>