Bootstrap an AI Startup First, Raise Money Later: Sean Minter, Founder CEO of AmplifAI (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What were the highlights of that journey? How long did you do it for? How big did it get and what happened to it?

Sean Minter: That company got to about $5 million in revenue. We actually sold it to a larger telecom entity called Birch Telecom.

In the next phase, broadband was just coming up. It was the late nineties. Everybody was still on dial-up internet. Nobody really had DSL or cable modems. So we raised for the next company. We actually raised money from the beginning. Over time we raised almost $250 million and built out a large telecom infrastructure doing broadband through the Midwest in the South of the US, basically covering about half the country. We partnered with Lucent Technologies back then and we built that business up and sold that ultimately.

Sramana Mitra: Was it a successful exit?

Sean Minter: It was a successful exit in a way. We had a lot of debt. So the equity, to be honest with you, didn’t make as much as you would think for a large entity like that.

That’s where I learned a little bit about debt and leverage. Debt and leverage becomes a challenge in a troubled market, especially around 2001-2002 when all the tech valuations got crushed, when you’re trying to exit and you have debt that has to get restructured. The equity made a little bit of money, but not as much as you would think for the large exit.

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

Sean Minter: That gets you to 2002-2003.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. What happens next?

Sean Minter: Well, voice over IP is the next technology. So we exit the broadband business. We move into selling voice over broadband at that point. Again, all B to B, not consumer focused.

Sramana Mitra: In Telecom?

Sean Minter: Yes. So we set up data centers. We put voice over IP switches into our data centers, connected them to the Internet, and then we’re able to resell writing voice over the Internet, replacing phone systems and things like that within the small business market. Then we ultimately bundled it with security and data and everything else to write a bundle package into a small, medium business. Again, we had just face to face sales with sales teams in the field doing B to B sales. For that company, we didn’t raise any money and got to about $20 million in revenue. We sold that to a public company called GTT.

Sramana Mitra: And that was a good exit?

Sean Minter: Yes, that was a good exit. There was really no equity or debt. That was 100% employee owned.

Sramana Mitra: And that’s where you probably made the most of your money.

Sean Minter: That’s true. That was probably the best one so far. After that, I ended up working for a private equity firm. That’s kind of how Amplify got started. I ended up running a contact center BPO business that they had bought. I’d never been in the contact center business before, but telecom companies have contact centers. So I was familiar with them. So they bought an outsourcing company called PRC out of South Florida that had about 15,000 employees in the U.S. and they were outsourcing call center work to Philippines, India, and Latin America.

That’s where the concept of what we do at Amplify came about. I had all these people. I didn’t know how to manage them. There was a lot of labor going into trying to understand performance. We ultimately sold that company as part of the PE firm to a company called Alorica. Then I started Amplify.

Sramana Mitra: So what is the genesis of Amplify? What did you want to do with Amplify? What was going on in the market that gave you those ideas? Explain what is Amplify? What does Amplify do?

Sean Minter: What Amplify does is, it takes data being generated in the call center to understand what your top performers are doing. It uses that data to drive actions to people to be able to replicate what those top performers are doing without labor-intensive work like generating reports, listening to calls, and figuring out what training people need.

How do I drive the labor-intensive actions a little more methodically – deliver better actions to super team leaders and supervisors, give trainers what they need to focus on, automate the quality process and ultimately make the agents better so they can perform better.

Sramana Mitra: How did you get this started? Is this a funded company or a bootstrapped company?

Sean Minter: I bootstrapped it to almost $1M ARR.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Bootstrap an AI Startup First, Raise Money Later: Sean Minter, Founder CEO of AmplifAI
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