10 Founders and VCs on Building Capital-Efficient Startups In Podcasts

Entrepreneurs starting out with little or no financing, as most do, will find inspiration and sound advice from each of the following founders and venture capitalists discussing how building a capital efficient business can pay off in this series of 30-minute podcast interviews.

Ricky Joshi, Saatva — As a Co-founder at Saatva, Ricky shares the story of growing his company from 0 to over $150 million in seven years. This is pretty much venture-scale growth. The best part of the story is that the company has raised no VC money at all. Wonderful conversation about a capital-efficient, deeply disciplined company.

Guy Mucklow, PCA Predict — President and Co-founder, Guy has bootstrapped PCA from London to $20 million in 2016 revenue. He also turned down a $100 million acquisition offer in 2015.

Kean Graham, CEO of MonetizeMore — Started his company with the stated goal of being able to travel while building his business. Listen to how he realized this goal.

Blaine Vess, Co-founder of StudyMode — Discusses how he made multiple business model shifts, and eventually scaled his company to $20 million in revenue with a sub 1% freemium conversion rate.

Bhavin Parikh, Founder CEO of Magoosh — Has built an incredibly capital efficient venture, and we discuss his philosophy, strategy, and tactics.

Susan Mason, Aligned Partners — General Partner of Aligned Ventures, Susan talks about the dysfunctions of the broader venture capital model, and what her firm is doing to address those.

Heidi Jannenga, Co-founder and President at WebPT, yet another scrappy entrepreneur who managed to bootstrap to over $1M ARR and THEN raised the first million in angel funding. Heidi’s company has crossed $40 million in revenue and has sold a portion of its equity to private equity.

Ho Nam, Altos Ventures — Managing Director at Altos Ventures, Ho makes a clear distinction between capital efficient company building and the “grow at costs in all sorts of unsustainable ways” philosophy. These are two distinctly different ways of building businesses.

Al Lalani, Founder of Social Annex — Discusses why he has followed his capital-efficient entrepreneurship strategy, and how he has managed to win against competitors who have each raised tens of millions in funding. Al has raised a total of $3 million.

Janet Kosloff, Co-Founder and CEO at InCrowd, has bootstrapped her company, then raised about $2.5 million in funding and hit $10 million in revenue in 2016. She shares insights from her journey.