Bootstrapping a Virtual Company to Scale: Taso Du Val, CEO of Toptal (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s take that on a more granular basis. What year are we talking when you decided, two years in, to give up?

Taso Du Val: That was probably around 2012. In 2012, we said, “Maybe we should figure something else out.” That was two years after we started the company.

Sramana Mitra: Who’s we? Who else was in the project?

Taso Du Val: My co-founder, Breanden Beneschott. After I started it in 2010, I ended up teaming up with my co-founder. He was still at Princeton University studying Chemical Engineering. Funny enough, he was actually one of the clients of Toptal. He said, “Your engineers are so great. How are you doing this?” I basically said to him, “Let’s team up. I want to do this with you. You’re sharp. You’ll do the operations.” That journey has been fantastic and stressful.

Sramana Mitra: That’s the journey that I’m trying to capture. In 2012, when you decided to do this as a more scalable venture, what were the next major strategic moves that you made?

Taso Du Val: We actually moved to Budapest. We lived there because it was very cost effective and you could have a great life as well as spend money on the business to scale it. It was a pretty cool thing that we did.

Sramana Mitra: Why Budapest? Did either of you have any roots in Budapest? Was it randomly Budapest?

Taso Du Val: It was very randomly Budapest. It’s a very nice city to live in. The atmosphere there is fantastic. There is a small community that was cool. It’s quite in contrast to Silicon Valley. That contrast attracted us. It was cheap. We could have great lives as well as hire great talent.

Sramana Mitra: What did you accomplish being based in Budapest?

Taso Du Val: We started the company.

Sramana Mitra: You were still bootstrapping while you were doing this?

Taso Du Val: Absolutely. We were paying our rent 100% based on the fact that we were bootstrapped and off of the profits.

Sramana Mitra: What happened in terms of real metrics? How did you do in terms of getting clients on one side and the engineers on the other?

Taso Du Val: That was very difficult. It was a combination of two years of consistent, hardcore outreach. It was a manual process. It was only really in our third year that we figured all that out to a somewhat sustainable degree. Now, we’ve got that down pretty well.

Sramana Mitra: When you actually did figure it out, what clicked?

Taso Du Val: I’m not sure there was ever a clicking moment; maybe a bunch of kicks! Our revenue was $100. Then $110. It never was overnight success. It was lots of hard work. I would say the only time that something clicked was when I started the business and realized the business model worked. That was an aha moment, so to speak.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping a Virtual Company to Scale: Taso Du Val, CEO of Toptal
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