David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

Our wheelhouse is bootstrapped (or lightly capitalized) SMB SaaS. We’re also regularly following-on for existing portfolio companies.”. At least 12 months of customer history, generally 20+ enterprise customers or 200+ SMB customers. Bigfoot Capital. ARR of $500K+. Growth support. Graduate.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Up and Running

MAY 10, 2012

“I realized that nonprofits were struggling with fund raising due to the economic downturn, and they needed a more diversified portfolio for their fundraising. ” The competition did more than educate and put money in the bank for this otherwise bootstrapped startup. .” And that’s how WeDidIt was born.

Small Business 142

Small Business Advisory Board Employee Entrepreneur 142

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 9, 2010

First, there are two primary aspects that have to be managed: inventory financing and customer acquisition costs. At the same time, we also have seen several examples of entrepreneurs who have successfully bootstrapped their e-commerce companies without any external financing until much later in the game. Or, bootstrap longer.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Malaysia India China 117

Haystack

JUNE 5, 2018

Not yet profitable but invaluable to developers worldwide, the decade-old company bootstrapped, differentiated from formidable competitors GitLab and Atlassian’s BitBucket, weathered leadership upheavals, and eventually ingested lots of venture capital which helped them weather the challenges they faced.

Acquisition 71

Acquisition Azure Open Source Seattle 71

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Years later Clavier's name now comes up all the time when one of his portfolio companies finds success; his exits include Mint, Tapulous, and UserPlane, other investments include Mashery (a ReadWriteWeb sponsor), Rapleaf, Fitbit, bitly, GroupOn, Twitter and many more. The stages of funding.

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

Austin Startup

AUGUST 2, 2018

Not only are they amplifying the data behind why this is a smart business move, but also driving that forward with their portfolio. Workshops included topics of price-setting, customer acquisition and legal considerations when starting a business. The conference was held on a Saturday, and it was packed?—?validation

Austin 57

Austin Software Review Technical Review Entrepreneur 57

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 23, 2018

Why aren’t there better ways of automating standard customer interactions? Note, this is something our portfolio company Ada is actually starting to address very successfully). Therefore, entrepreneurs need to figure out how to bootstrap the chicken and egg problem and overcome this lack of data. For example….

Artificial Inteligence 94

Artificial Inteligence Vertical API Bootstrapping 94

YoungUpstarts

JULY 8, 2013

Although stressful, we bootstrapped the company for as long as possible while having conversations with potential investors. Some angel investors are part of a network that provides free access to legal counsel for all of their portfolio companies. Access to capital can be challenging to say the least.

Small Business 276

Small Business Cofounder Social Media Angel Investor 276

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

Asking for early-stage money before you have customers and revenue will likely kill your credibility with real investors. Seed-stage, meanwhil e, is technically that critical period when you need funding to do solution- and business-model development, to prove that your new product or service works, before you try to sell it to customers.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Finance Early Stage Startup 120

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

JULY 18, 2011

Tip: If you want to go into a market where you are unsure, bootstrap to get a sense of whether there’s a massive opportunity. Tip: Lock in enterprise customers incrementally, if you stretch too far then you just pull back, when you start doing custom work or bend from your core values, that’s your litmus test.

Cofounder 49

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley San Francisco 49

Rob Go

MARCH 20, 2013

The best trick I’ve heard (which is actually really hard to do) is to talk to customers, but to do it from the perspective of a skeptic. We want to bootstrap as much as possible and believe we can because we should be profitable by summer (not a lot of profit, but some). Be brutally honest with yourself.

Bootstrapping 46

Bootstrapping Finance Dividend Vesting 46

Mucker Lab

MARCH 8, 2016

Four years after founding and bootstrapping Mucker Capital , we are pleased to announce the close of a new $45 million fund, Mucker III. With a well-capitalized fund, great LPs, and a solid portfolio, we are privileged to continue serving exceptional entrepreneurs. The ones who spend more time with their customers than on Twitter.

Burn Rate 60

Burn Rate Limited Partner Bootstrapping Portfolio 60

YoungUpstarts

JULY 20, 2015

And from that point, it is all about growing the idea from a concept to an operation that provides value to customers and that yields you a profit. Manage your working capital with bootstrapping or investor cash injections. There are no shortcuts to the top. Every business starts off with an idea. Know your market!

Angel Investor 100

Angel Investor Channel Bootstrapping Operations 100

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 28, 2010

At today's roundtable we saw three very nice businesses, each with pilot customers, and each working on real problems. Antonio has a portfolio of Web-based business process management applications for small businesses with 10-100 employees. And these pilots will pay for her early bootstrapping phase.

Partner 117

Partner Belgium Portugal Bootstrapping 117

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

So unless your feature can increase that outcome – and not just incrementally by 20% but a serious differential like 10x – it’s unlikely that a current happy Mailchimp customer will want to switch to your product. The best way to assess what VCs actually like is to look at their portfolio.

Sales Cycle 54

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 54

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

If you don’t value your product neither will your customers. Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. In the early days of building Qualtrics, Ryan tried giving the product away to entice customers to use it.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 145

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

So unless your feature can increase that outcome – and not just incrementally by 20% but a serious differential like 10x – it’s unlikely that a current happy Mailchimp customer will want to switch to your product. The best way to assess what VCs actually like is to look at their portfolio.

Sales Cycle 48

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

If you don’t value your product neither will your customers. Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. In the early days of building Qualtrics, Ryan tried giving the product away to entice customers to use it.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

With a portfolio that includes food, tech, and services, the fund is industry-agnostic and focused on the overlooked and underrepresented with high-margin business models. Of Indie.VC’s portfolio, 60% of investments are not in NY, CA, or MA. The INTRO tool is available to non-portfolio companies as well. Details here.

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Here is a 60-second tour of IM Creator: IM Creator is bootstrapped with $250k from the founder Jonathan Saragossi, and a few unknown angel investors. Service includes integrated Google Analytics, SEO tools, and on-demand customer service. IM Creator also allows users to create customized Facebook pages.

Coder 87

Coder Angel Investor Web Bootstrapping 87

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 14, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. I want to know how many customers exist out there who would be likely buyers of the O-Port products, at what price-point, and what does that add up to?

Bootstrapping 114

Bootstrapping Marketing Angel Investor Silicon Valley 114

The Startup Toolkit

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

5mm/year) and someone buys you to add that revenue to their portfolio (revenue-based acquisition). all your revenue comes from one big customer). Not a lot of people think about revenue-based exits, so I guess I hope spreading the word can help finish off the myth that bootstrapping equals small and unambitious.

Dividend 50

Dividend Acquisition Founder Bootstrapping 50

VC Cafe

JANUARY 22, 2021

AI startups in the Alexa Fund portfolio. AWS Marketplace Startup Program – the ‘app store’ for B2B startups who are interested to sell their product to AWS customers. Some of the past participants in the AWS Builder Space program in Israel (Disclosure: Novos is a Remagine Ventures portfolio company).

Technical Review 174

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital Incubator 174

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Forget about traction and hockey stick growth.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Forget about traction and hockey stick growth.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Up and Running

JANUARY 8, 2018

There’s usually not much money for expanding staffing before funding is secured, and many entrepreneurs are forced to wear different hats, dabbling in bookkeeping, customer service, copywriting, design—the list goes on. Or, maybe you’ve made some mistakes that cost your business customers or money. Ask for work samples.

Entrepreneur 177

Entrepreneur Algorithm Hiring Web Development 177

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 23, 2014

Creating Customers for Life: 50 Resources on Loyalty, Churn, and Customer Retention | Help Scout – crowdspring.co/1lD094d. Helpful insight for bootstrapping entrepreneurs … how we built besnappy for 317000 – crowdspring.co/1o7tpX4. 15 Free Bootstrap Admin Themes – crowdspring.co/1jB1FYK.

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

An entrepreneur starts a company in classic " bootstrap " fashion - with a combination of sweat equity and their own financial resources. As a result, the VC will often block a portfolio company from harvesting a very attractive, but not home run, return. Venture capitalists Cut Tough Deals.

Angel Investor 112

Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

Software By Rob

JANUARY 8, 2019

And we received offers of support from successful founders who have raised funding, bootstrapped, and those who’ve done both: +1 on that! Their customers demand a certain kind of return – one that can only be achieved by looking for businesses that have the potential to provide a 100x or 1000x return on their investment.

Early Stage 46

Early Stage Valuation Seed Capital Revenue 46

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. Jason: So how many of those 20,000 people are paying customers? Edwin: Okay, I have different types of customers.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

The Startup Toolkit

DECEMBER 28, 2012

I just made a new portfolio site with cactus , a python static site generator. How many days have I squandered trying to optimize strategy and customer development when I could have cut the project in half with better tech choices!? Bootstrap (basic style). Oh man — the joy! It didn’t have to be big.

Bootstrapping 35

Bootstrapping Lean Portfolio Hosting 35

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 23, 2012

After browsing the portfolios and prices for some individual graphic designers there was no clear fit for our company. In our second year of operation we had a retail storefront where we serviced computers for residential customers. “Bootstrapping” and organic growth are our methods of operation.

Small Business 72

Small Business Chicago Bootstrapping PR 72

Spencer Fry

MAY 11, 2011

A quick Google search for "bootstrap marketing" brings up a bunch of useless nonsense. The results are either in the form of "Top 10 Bootstrap Marketing Tips" or "Bootstrap Marketing 101" guides. For example, a friend of Dave Gorum sees his portfolio and thinks: "How'd Dave Gorum get such an amazing online portfolio?"

Bootstrapping 78

Bootstrapping Marketing Portfolio SEO 78

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. I want to know how many customers exist out there who would be likely buyers of the O-Port products, at what price-point, and what does that add up to?

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. I want to know how many customers exist out there who would be likely buyers of the O-Port products, at what price-point, and what does that add up to?

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

K9 Ventures

MAY 28, 2015

In my discussions with K9 portfolio founders about scaling revenue, I very often end up drawing the same picture: $0/month. For most startups going from no revenue to their first paying customer is a major milestone. Once you have a handful of customers you need to then figure out what’s the pattern that makes the process repeatable.

Revenue 48

Revenue Startup Burn Rate Cofounder 48

Software By Rob

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

Who says a bootstrapped startup can’t succeed? Here are 10 bootstrapped companies that did it on their own with no outside funding. No venue wants to be told that their product is worthless, and no customer wants to go see a show that’s unsellable,” said Robert Graff. Startup #1: Goldstar. The company has over 1.5

Bootstrapping 78

Bootstrapping Startup Cofounder Salary 78