Bootstrapping to Exit, Then do a VC-Funded Venture: Cordial CEO Jeremy Swift (Part 2)

Jeremy Swift: I worked full-time during the day. I started waning on college. I was talking to advisors and told them about it. An advisor in the Comm department and another from the business department both sat down with me and said, “We understand your personality and what you’re interested in pursuing. We’re going to work with you if you’ll work with us to help you finish school.”

It took me a bit longer. It took me three more years to be able to finish my degree. I was on the six-year college program. I ended up taking night classes. I put my out-of-office reply in the middle of the day and I’d drive back to campus to a class and then race back to the office.

Bootstrapping to Exit, Then do a VC-Funded Venture: Cordial CEO Jeremy Swift (Part 1)

A very effective way to dance the entrepreneurial Waltz is to do a bootstrapped company first, sell it, and then do another with a more ambitious agenda. Jeremy’s journey is a great case study in this method.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What are the metrics? How many buy side and how many sell side do you have?

Mike Rosenbaum: We have over 50,000 locations across Australia and over 200,000 members on our platform. In the US, we have over 10,000 locations now. It’s growing rapidly. The key thing for us is to keep balancing supply and demand at that hyperlocal level. That’s something we’re optimizing. 

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What worked?

Mike Rosenbaum: It’s hard to say when we started getting product-market fit. Over time, we just got better and better at targeting the right customers whether that was through Google or Facebook or offline channels. Eventually, it was word of mouth. Now, most of our new supply is people telling other people about the positive experience that they’ve had.

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you launch with your own money?

Mike Rosenbaum: We made a lot of mistakes as well. We did okay. I put in some of my money. I had a new co-founder, Roland. He came from private equity background and had a very complementary skillset. He was more of a finance and strategy guy. We had met over the previous 12 months or so. We kept in touch. We put in some money. We raised some money from our network. 

Sramana Mitra: Give me more specifics. What did you raise money with? Did you do an MVP?

Validating B-to-C Business Ideas and Building to $40M Run Rate: Shaunak Amin, CEO of SnackMagic (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2020 when the pandemic hit?

Shaunak Amin: At that time, we had two hubs. We had plans to open up five more. Then in March, nobody was in office. That business went to zero overnight. It was unfortunate. I remember it was the second week of March. We said we are going to take a pause. We all went home. We were thinking we’ll come back in a few weeks. By the second week, we realized that this is going to be longer.

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about customer acquisition? When you’re selling on eBay, eBay provides the foot traffic.

Mike Rosenbaum: It was the early days of e-commerce. There was a much smaller number of people shopping online. We had built this large database off eBay which we used to sell direct. We would send emails to them. Initially it was one email a week. Then it was two. Eventually it became one a day.

Validating B-to-C Business Ideas and Building to $40M Run Rate: Shaunak Amin, CEO of SnackMagic (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Customer acquisition was all Facebook ads?

Shaunak Amin: Initially it was. We built the waitlist using Facebook ads. Then when we launched, the whole idea of group ordering means that there’s some virality in the product itself. We had this concept where one person could share a link. Those other people could become customers. Just to remind you, it was still centered around dinner at that time. There was no lunch. We launched, but the business wasn’t growing the way I’d like. It didn’t make sense for me.