Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like at this point, you have decided on the positioning and the target market. You started generating revenue. You hit the million dollar mark. What’s the next major inflection point?

Mikko Valimaki: One important point in the early days was, we were also talking with venture capital. When we got the first few six-figure deals, we were lucky enough that we didn’t raise money. By 2011, we decided that we don’t need additional funds as we were growing on our sales. That was one of the important things that we figured early on.

Sramana Mitra: What else?

Mikko Valimaki: From there, it’s been mainly about scaling. We are now expanding to cloud. We have some products for mobile, which are related to our product technically, but the use case is now very different. We are more than 60 people now. This year, we are on track to $10 million.

Sramana Mitra: You are still based in Helsinki?

Mikko Valimaki: Yes, most of our R&D is here. Our customer support people are in different countries. We have people in Silicon Valley. There are several guys in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

Sramana Mitra: Basically, this company is bootstrapped right?

Mikko Valimaki: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: What has been your experience building the company from Helsinki? What is your observation of building a business from Helsinki?

Mikko Valimaki: I know all the companies who have grown out of here. One example is MySQL. One of the metrics to compare is, there seems to be more time here. We are not that close to all the action. We haven’t had this urgency to generate very quickly. I think we have grown very quickly, but I would say that if we would have raised money at the early stage, at this point, the company could have been sold already. Now it’s still under our own control.

For the past five years, we have been growing at an average of 50%. We still have plans to grow this company way bigger than it is right now. If you do away with taking venture capital early, you can keep control of the company and keep on growing way further. I know the typical lifecycle of a VC fund is five years.

Sramana Mitra: VCs are not interesting in growing a company from zero to $10 million in five years. They’re interested in growing a company from zero to $100 million in five years. It doesn’t matter. As far as you are concerned, you’ve built a company that is self-financed and is growing at your own pace. I think it’s a great success story. It’s wonderful that you were able to do it and you like doing what you do. I don’t see that as a downside at all. The models are different. The expectations are different.

Mikko Valimaki: We are proud of what we have created. We try to keep growing 50% per year.

Sramana Mitra: It’s excellent. We support the bootstrapped companies hugely, and we celebrate the bootstrapped success stories constantly. I’m very happy to talk to you.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera
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