Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $100 Million from The Netherlands

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

Pierre and Fred Guelen bootstrapped Planon, a very significant company from The Netherlands, using the bootstrapping using services principle. Read this conversation from 2016 to learn more.

Sramana Mitra: We’re going to start at the very beginning of your personal journeys. One of you please start by telling us where you’re from, where you were born, and in what kind of background, and then we’ll do the same thing with the other person.

Pierre Guelen: I’m the CEO of Planon group. Fred is my brother. We were born in The Netherlands in a small town near the German border. We were raised in an entrepreneurial family. My father owned a large building company. He was already the fourth generation in that building company.

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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey into FinTech: Felix Rodriguez, Founder and CEO of finally (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. What were the other startups that you were working on at this point?

Felix Rodriguez: Immediately after that, we were thinking that for this company that has over 50 people, what could I and a couple of other engineers build that’s more automated. We were really passionate about automation. I think people call it AI now. But we were thinking about how could we automate the publishing business. We had a website business where we had a bunch of web designers. So, in order to get traffic on the web, you have to put content, right? And Google was starting to really take off.

Catching Up On Readings: State of Digital Health Q1’24

This report from CB Insights provides insights into the state of the digital health industry. Digital health funding grew 48% q-o-q in the quarter driven by $100M+ funding for biotech startups leveraging AI. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Catching Up On Readings: Global IPO Trends Q1 2024

This report from Ernst & Young analyzes the trends in the global IPO market for the first quarter of 2024. The Americas and EMEIA regions are looking up but the APAC region is plunging. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Very good. So, what is the genesis of the new company?

RJ Talyor: Well, when we were purchased, I was playing around with the early versions of the generative text content. With my history in email marketing combined with my background as an English major [it’s really unique in the tech space], I went back to what if we could create unique and performant content that drives actual performance on the email side? So, those are two important adjectives, unique and performant.

Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra:  So how did you finance all this in the early stages?

RJ Talyor: At Pattern89, we raised money from a few different sources, mostly from Friends and Family/Angels. Then we were backed by High Alpha, which is a venture studio as well as a venture capital firm. They invested in Pattern89, which allowed us to hire the right people and build the machine out.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of numbers are we talking? How much did you raise?

RJ Talyor: In total, we raised $8 million.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to $20 Million

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

VisiQuate Founder CEO Brian Robertson is a serial bootstrapper. In fact, he always bootstraps using services. A terrific entrepreneur to learn from. This conversation is from 2020.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Brian Robertson: I’m from Northern California. We’re not in the heart of Silicon Valley, but up in Sonoma County. I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but I was only there for two weeks. My dad was in the Navy. His family was from the Midwest and we were there for a short period.

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Catching Up On Readings: AI 100 2024

This annual list from CB Insights is the eighth annual ranking of the 100 most promising private AI companies in the world. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.