PaaS: Calling ALL PaaS Leaders

You may have read some of my writings on Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), for example, on our blog, LinkedIn, or SeekingAlpha:

Cloud Stocks: SaaS Companies NEED PaaS Strategy
SaaS Companies: You Have An Unprecedented Opportunity

At 1Mby1M, we’re putting significant emphasis on PaaS for our community of SaaS entrepreneurs, with the observation that both customer acquisition and exits would come more naturally if they work within certain eco-systems to which they have strategic relevance.

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Colors: Snow Country, Blue Storm

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about Art and Culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of Art – a painting, a poem, a piece of music, so forth – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Snow Country, Blue Storm

Snow Country, Blue Storm| Sramana Mitra, 2017 | Water color and Pastel | 18 x 24, On Paper

Related Reading: Let’s Go Beyond Superficial Virtual Interactions

Colors: Nestled Valley, Snow

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about Art and Culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of Art – a painting, a poem, a piece of music, so forth – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Nestled Valley, Snow

Nestled Valley, Snow | Sramana Mitra, 2017 | Water color and Pastel | 18 x 24, On Paper

Related Reading: If I Were 22: I Was Fired from My Own Company

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping to Unicorns

While it doesn’t happen that often, Bootstrapped Unicorns do exist.

My 2014 Entrepreneur Journeys book, Billion Dollar Unicorns has a whole section on this topic. You can read an excerpt on my blog titled Bootstrapped Unicorns. In this piece, I discuss three companies, Zoho, eClinicalWorks, and Veeam, that have bootstrapped to about a billion dollars in revenues.

Revenues NOT valuation.

That puts their valuations in the five to ten billion range or beyond. So they are Unicorns (billion dollar valuation) many times over.

You can also read an interview with Sridhar Vembu of Zoho here that describes the early journey of the company: Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu.

I interviewed him again some years later on Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho.

You can read an interview with Girish Navani of eClinicalWorks on his early journey here: Built To Enjoy: eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani

I also interviewed him again some years later on Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Girish Navani, CEO of eClinicalWorks

Girish was also at one of our roundtables where he described his journey. You can listen to the recording here:

You can read about Ratmir Timashev’s journey here: Unicorn in the Making: Veeam CEO Ratmir Timashev. Veeam DID become a Unicorn and has raised Private Equity funding.

Ratmir was also at one of our roundtables where he describing his journey. You can listen to the recording here:

Related Case Studies:

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L

Bootstrapping a Billion Dollar Unicorn in Online Real Estate: Auction.com CEO Jeff Frieden

Bootstrapping a Billion Dollar Unicorn with Services from Utah: Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com

Best of Bootstrapping: Alteryx Bootstrapped with Services to a Public Unicorn

AI Unicorn ZipRecruiter First Bootstrapped, then Raised Money

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Celonis Bootstrapped First, Raised Money Later

Bootstrapped Unicorn: Qualtrics Founders Walk Away with $7 Billion

Billion Dollar Unicorns: CarGurus Bootstraps its Way to an IPO

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Adyen Bootstraps to Multi-Billion Valuations

Billion Dollar Unicorns: eClinicalWorks Bootstraps With A Paycheck

PaaS: SaaS Companies NEED PaaS Strategy

I have been analyzing SaaS companies for over a decade. More recently, I have been looking into their acquisition strategies, as many have now reached critical mass and need to expand beyond the one product that made them successful to begin with.

Some clear trends are evident in the industry:

First, SaaS companies are acquiring capital efficient startups much more readily than heavily funded ones. Bootstrapped startups are particularly popular as acquisition targets. We’ve covered several prolific acquirers of small startups:

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Colors: Snow Storm, Monochrome

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about Art and Culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of Art – a painting, a poem, a piece of music, so forth – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Snow Storm, Monochrome

Snow Storm, Monochrome | Sramana Mitra, 2017 | Water color and Pastel | 18 x 24, On Paper

Related Reading: Silicon Valley: The Next Decade

Best of Bootstrapping: Blitzscaling vs. Bootstrapping

You must have read something or the other about Blitzscaling, the hypergrowth phenomenon that Reid Hoffman has been championing:

What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?

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Colors: Stimulating the Renaissance Mind

I’m publishing a new series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about Art and Culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of Art – a painting, a poem, a piece of music, so forth – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – White Snow, Brown Canyon.

Snow in Bryce Canyon, Utah | Sramana Mitra, 2017 | Watercolor and Pastel | 18 x 24, On Paper