An SEO-Driven Bootstrapping Success: Benchmark Email CEO Curt Keller (Part 2)

Sramana: Essentially you wanted to execute on a business strategy that was already proven as a way of reducing risk. How did you get yourself off the ground?

Curt Keller: It would have taken a lot of money to do all the programming in the U.S. I made a conscious decision to find good resources and build a relationship with developers in India. It took me a year to find a programming group that I could trust and that was good.

Sramana: How did you go about doing that? This is a very common challenge in this space.

Curt Keller: The best way to do it is trial and error. I created a very small list of expectations and I started making relationships with five or six different people. I would offer up small, $1,000 contracts to each of them. I could weed out poor communicators very quickly through that process. There were two groups. One individual rose above the rest. His communication was incredible, he went above and beyond.

Sramana: How did you find your talent pool?

Curt Keller: I went to Google and typed in a few different search phrases. I went through about a hundred different companies.

Sramana: So you did not use Elance?

Curt Keller: Not back then. You could today. There are pros and cons to that. I am not necessarily a big fan. I am not looking for somebody who wants me to just be a client of theirs. I am looking for somebody unique who can be interwoven into my team. I want them to have a vested interest so they want to go above and beyond. If you just find a vendor through traditional channels it could work, but I prefer doing things away from the norm.

Sramana: So you were looking for individuals as opposed to vendors?

Curt Keller: I was looking for a very small company that would have select key clients. I was hoping I could become their only client.

Sramana: I would look at a vendor who was willing to have only one client in a suspect manner.

Curt Keller: In this case they did have a handful of clients. The reason I liked them smaller, with limited clients, is that they became vested in our projects. It was important to them for us to be successful.

Sramana: So the sweet spot was a small company with a handful of clients that would not do a hack job. You obviously found one good enough to outsource your development. How much did it cost to get your first product off the ground?

Curt Keller: The first product cost around $20,000.

Sramana: What was the competitive landscape you were playing in at that point?

Curt Keller: We were benchmarking against Constant Contact, Campaigner, and VerticalResponse.

This segment is part 2 in the series : An SEO-Driven Bootstrapping Success: Benchmark Email CEO Curt Keller
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