Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You have a tremendous revenue stream. Where are you now? How far along are you?

Nilay Banker: We are getting into the tens of millions of dollars. We are doubling every year in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: How many people?

Nilay Banker: Now, we are close to 50 people. Almost everybody is in the US. We are focusing on international expansion. Right now, most of our customers have their headquarters in the US. We are focusing on expansion to Europe and then Asia-Pacific, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your leads come from Oracle?

Nilay Banker: At this point, about 40% to 50%. Over time, that’s going to change as we increase our own efforts. We are optimizing our own channels. We are getting some more channel partners who can resell and implement our software. We also will have a direct channel which is going to bring in additional revenue.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your revenue comes from gain share at this point?

Nilay Banker: About 25% is coming from gain share. We expect to double that this year.

Sramana Mitra: Your business model, as time goes by, is going to weigh much more on the gain share direction.

Nilay Banker: In most cases, we are seeing that as an opportunity to just focus on that and give away our software for free.

Sramana Mitra: From the 50 people that you have, what percentage of that is focused on servicing the gain share revenue? Do you have to service the gain share revenue or is that pure profit?

Nilay Banker: Pure profit. Once you turn it on, it just keeps on giving.

Sramana Mitra: This is very cool. This is really awesome. I take it you have no need for external financing. You are doing fine just by yourselves.

Nilay Banker: I think we are doing pretty good on our own. Never say never, but at this point, the model is working for us.

Sramana Mitra: What is your end game? Do you want to go public at some point or do you want to sell the company? What do you fantasize about?

Nilay Banker: We are going to keep building. We have so much innovation left. We have so many ideas. There’s so much to do.

Sramana Mitra: You’re based in the Bay Area?

Nilay Banker: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me a little bit about incentivizing talent in a bootstrapped model while competing with this crazy venture-funding around you. What is your pitch to talent?

Nilay Banker: The pitch is not very different from what other companies in the Valley might talk about. Silicon Valley is all about motivation. We innovate in a very different space – fintech. The pitch is, “Let’s work hard. Let’s play hard. Let’s build a company that is our company. Let’s build a beautiful product.” Of course, everybody cares about equity. We do give them equity. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out in the end, but people are drawn to equity in the company.

Sramana Mitra: Which means you’re going to give them returns through that equity either through exit or dividends. You actually have the option of doing dividends because you have a self-financed company.

Nilay Banker: Exactly. We’ll see what the end game is. There is no particular target that we have set. There are so many of us who have so many ideas. It’s going to be interesting where we’re going to be a couple of years from now.

Sramana Mitra: Great. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services to an Awesome Business Model: Inspyrus CEO Nilay Banker
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