Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to hit $1 million ARR with this product?

Jawad Shaikh: At the end of 2019, we were roughly at $500,000 ARR. Twelve months later, we were at $4.9 million ARR. We spent a lot and invested a lot in a period of three years to perfect this. We also changed our pricing model at the end of 2019. 2020 has been a blow-up year as you can see. There was a 900% growth from an ARR perspective. 

Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you started to identify the opportunity for productization, it was still just the two of you? Were there other people involved?

Jawad Shaikh: No, we started hiring people much early on. I used to say that in my first business, it took us ten years to get to 30 employees. In Avelead, we reached 20 employees in less than three years. 

Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a little bit more about what the product is? What was the process of identifying this product that you wanted to build?

Jawad Shaikh: This was during the Obama years and the stimulus package of helping healthcare systems move to electronic medical records. Our job was always to help hospitals implement those systems. We migrate data and get electronic as much as possible. There were a lot of challenges with that.

Bootstrapping Using Services from Atlanta: Avelead CEO Jawad Shaikh (Part 1)

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As usual, we love Bootstrapping Using Services case studies.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Best of Bootstrapping: Duda Co-founders Bootstrap with Paychecks

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Itai Sadan is the Co-founder and CEO of Duda, a company that turns desktop websites into mobile sites. When we spoke in 2013, Itai had over 10 years of experience in business development, partner management, program management, and development. Prior to founding Duda (formerly DudaMobile), Itai was a director at SAP, where he managed the SAP Discovery System program and was in charge of relationships with IBM, HP, and Fujitsu.

Sramana: Itai, let’s start with the beginning of your personal journey. What is the story that paved the way for your entrepreneurial journey?

Itai Sadan: I was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. I did have a six-year stint in South Africa, where our family lived for a while. I went to high school in Tel Aviv and met the person who is the co-founder and CTO of DudaMobile during my high school years. After high school I went to the army and served in the anti-terrorist school. After I completed my three-year army service, I traveled the world a little bit.

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Bootstrapping to $7 Million: Constellix CEO Steven Job (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: If you own an e-commerce or a large-sized business, an outage is challenging. 

Steven Job: Yes, it’s a huge problem. For instance, Amazon was down on October 22. Their DNS provider had a full day outage, so no one was able to buy any products from Amazon that day. This was a big loss. This happened because they had a single DNS provider. They had a single solution and they had no redundancy.

Bootstrapping to $7 Million: Constellix CEO Steven Job (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is the next step in turning this into a real business? 

Steven Job: Are you asking me how I took it from there to a million? My way of doing it probably wasn’t the smartest way. My way was to rinse, wash, and repeat. It was doing it over and over again and doing it better.

Bootstrapping to $7 Million: Constellix CEO Steven Job (Part 4)

Steven Job: I would answer any questions. When I answered those questions, I had my name and the name DNS Made Easy on the footer. I would also recommend my services there. It was hours and hours of answering questions and putting my name out there.

I remember when someone said, “What are DNS providers? I’m having problems. Who would you recommend?” I was so excited. I said, “Hey you know what, I launched this new service. Give it a try.”