Bootstrapping Using Services: James Kane, CEO of RWS (Part 1)

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We’re big believers in Bootstrapping Using Services, as you know. Here’s yet another story of an entrepreneur who has scaled to over $10 million in revenue using the method.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

James Kane: I grew up in a very small town in far northern New York. It’s a college town of about 2,000 people. My father was a university professor. He taught Mechanical Engineering at Clarkson University.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do for college or university?

James Kane: I left high school early at the age of 16 to attend university. I studied Math and Computer Science at Clarkson University. I ended up leaving Clarkson when I was 19 which is when business had picked up to the point where it had exceeded what I had expected to make working as a programmer.

Sramana Mitra: You started doing jobs while you were still in your undergraduate program. You were making so much money that you decided you wanted to quit.

James Kane: That is essentially the case. I had applied to several top tier universities. I had been accepted into Carnegie Mellon and Cornell. I wanted to study there, but our family didn’t have the money for me to go do that. I could attend Clarkson for free. The original plan was to go to school at Clarkson for free and start doing some side work to earn enough money to transition to a more prestigious school. The plan ended up being invalidated at the point where the amount of money I was making through working exceeded the amount of money that I can reasonably expect to make with a degree at a more prestigious school.

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

James Kane: Roughly 1998 in the beginning of the dot com boom. I finished around 2011.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

James Kane: The initial business that we had ended up failing.

Sramana Mitra: What was the business idea?

James Kane: During school, we built a computer algebra system called Calculus Machina for John Wiley & Sons. The purpose of that was to be able to build a computer system that could solve calculus problems in a way that students could reference to see step-by-step solutions. All throughout college, I was working on that software. It was ultimately released but was largely unsuccessful. Right around that 2011 timeframe, the relationship with John Wiley & Sons came to an end.

Sramana Mitra: What was your next move?

James Kane: I didn’t have a particularly good next move. I went and learned how to fly airplanes and I worked, for a couple of years, as a pilot.

Sramana Mitra: Why?

James Kane: There was no good reason. I was quite young at that time. I always liked learning new things and it was very different from what I had been doing before, so I threw myself into it. I really enjoyed it.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services: James Kane, CEO of RWS
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