Reena Jadhav, CEO of nuAlerts, interviews Arjun Arora, CEO of ReTargeter on lessons learned while bootstrapping. ReTargeter is an online solution that allows you to show display ads to people who have just left your website. Their customers include celebrity sites such as Bill Cosby to ecommerce sites and more. Arjun raised a small round in May 2009 from family and friends but primarily bootstrapped his venture.
He shares his top challenges bootstrapping his venture:
1. Staying laser focused on what needs to be done
2. Slow controlled growth and limitation on growth potential due to capital constraints
3. Keeping costs low while doing the right things for customers and employees.
His secret to keeping costs low? Tons of free software for managing operations and leveraging passionate hungry interns! Watch the interview to hear the specific free products he’s using to run his operations.
So how does he decide where to spend his minimal budget? He shares that he spends very little on marketing, instead focusing on guerilla marketing tactics to drive awareness. Operations are primarily through free software and interns. Clearly he’s got the magic formula for running a lean mean growing machine!
