Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan (Part 3)

Sramana: You had the vision for DudaMobile but left SAP in 2010. What happened during the in-between years?

Itai Sadan: After I had been relocated to Palo Alto to work in the SAP headquarters, I brought Amir into SAP to work on my team. We were both working in Palo Alto for SAP when I had had the idea. I brought it up to Amir, and we began talking about it. We got all excited about the idea and contemplated leaving SAP, but we kept joking around about different reasons we should stay at SAP. Our bonuses were due in 2009 so we waited for the bonuses.

That really shows how long it takes to develop software. We were working on the project during the evenings and on weekends for that two-year period. It takes a while to write good software, and we did not want to leave the company until we were able to sustain ourselves.

Sramana: In our program, we encourage people to keep their paychecks and work on their businesses on evenings and weekends. You should get validation before you leave your job. When you leave your job, you want to be in a more advanced stage so that you can get to revenues and pay bills. We call that method bootstrapping with a paycheck.

Itai Sadan: That is what I tell every entrepreneur I meet. The number one reason your idea will fail is that you will give up. You will run out of money, and you will have pressure from family or other financial obligations. You need to do yourself a favor and work on your idea as much as you can during your off hours. When you hit the point that it becomes impossible to work both jobs at the same time, then it is probably the right time to leave and dedicate your time to your company.

Sramana: Tell me a bit about the techniques you used to validate your idea.

Itai Sadan: We built the technology to be a mobile site builder. We wanted a DIY mobile site builder where small businesses could come in, push a button, and see their desktop site be transformed into a mobile site. Initially we looked for small businesses that would allow us to provide this as a service. We would use the technology that we developed to build their mobile sites.

We reached out to mobile businesses in our community. We walked the streets, bought advertising on Google, and did anything we could to get the word out. The Google advertising turned out to be the most effective method of getting our first small business customers. We were operating in the early days as an agency, and we used Google as a method to generate leads. We knew that ultimately we would not operate the company as an agency, but this was something that we wanted to do to test the product.

Our agency model of operating the business worked, but scaling the business proved to be very difficult. In early 2010 we got a phone call from David Krantz at AT&T Interactive. He had heard about our technology and he needed it. We never thought that big companies that catered to small businesses would be a business model for us, but it was interesting and compelling. Three months later both Amir and I left SAP, completed building the product, and went live with AT&T.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: DudaMobile CEO Itai Sadan
1 2 3 4 5 6 7