Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from New Jersey: Suuchi Ramesh, CEO of Suuchi (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the period where you’re still bootstrapping with a paycheck with this network of factories. What prompted you to quit your job and feel comfortable enough to go full-time on this?

Suuchi Ramesh: Within six months, we had half a million in bookings. That was validation. It wasn’t profitable, but the net burn wasn’t crazy. It was driving itself forward. I saw the opportunity. We just didn’t commercialize the digital solution early on because we had to build the features. That had to be informed by what we understood. We had to do that first.

The commercializing started driving revenue fast. That was with no sales team and no marketing. When you’re able to drive that kind of revenue within six months, that is a great testament to the potential demand. I was having conversations with these decision makers.

Now we’re purely enterprise-focused. When we began, we were servicing smaller businesses as well. Over time, we transitioned to up market.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the point where you had quit your job and you have $500,000 in bookings. From how many customers?

Suuchi Ramesh: This was from about 15 to 20 customers.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Suuchi Ramesh: The goal was to bring on more customers and start to put more thought and funding into the product itself. We continue to add customers and we started to go further upmarket. We added quantity and quality.

At this point, it was still primarily the sourcing platform. This was around early 2017 to mid 2017 when we started looking for a team abroad that could develop the product.

Sramana Mitra: So far you’re bootstrapped?

Suuchi Ramesh: Yes, correct.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you for the first version of the software?

Suuchi Ramesh: The first version was about five months. I brought on two engineers. This was the second half of 2017. We brought on an offshore team. It took some time to do the research on the right development team.

I also hired two engineers. These were engineers with a couple of years of experience each. I took on one angel round of funding to go into the software. The investor put in about $200,000. That funded the first version.

Sramana Mitra: What were you doing in the sourcing business revenues at that point?

Suuchi Ramesh: The team was 40 people. At that time, one we had one partly in-house. It’s sort of an R&D center. That was going into funding the operations.

Sramana Mitra: Revenue-wise, what were you operating this at?

Suuchi Ramesh: It was above a million. That’s where we finished the year.

Sramana Mitra: Which is from the sourcing business?

Suuchi Ramesh: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: 2018 is when you launched the software product?

Suuchi Ramesh: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: Some of these sourcing customers, were they turning into software customers?

Suuchi Ramesh: At the beginning, we did it in three phases. We began with getting on the first set of existing sourcing platform customers on the product. We didn’t charge at that phase. Then I remember in June, we did two things. We brought on the remaining customers and we started charging by login. By the end of 2018, all sourcing platform customers had to pay for the software.

Sramana Mitra: What was the pricing?

Suuchi Ramesh: We experimented from $300 per user per month to $425 per user per month.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping with a Paycheck from New Jersey: Suuchi Ramesh, CEO of Suuchi
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