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It is worth elaborating on bootstrapping. When we started, the hottest tech company in the world was Netscape, and Yahoo was still an infant. So you can see how

It is worth elaborating on bootstrapping. When we started, the hottest tech company in the world was Netscape, and Yahoo was still an infant. So you can see how long it has taken us - nothing much happens to you in 1 year, 2 years and so on. The only thing we had going was patience. It helped that I was educating myself about Japan. We didn't set out with the mission of bootstrapping. It was sheer necessity: we had no big ideas (only some little ideas), and had no way of impressing anyone to put money on us. Our very first product was this: http://www.webnms.com/snmp/ http://www.webnms.com/snmp/ - the amazing part is we still make money on it! But sexy it isn't - a VC who stumbled on us told us "Why are you focused on such a tiny market?" By the time money was offered to us, we didn't need it, and we were having too much fun building stuff to even bother pitching to VCs. We came close to a VC round once in 2000: a term sheet was offered. There were things there I didn't like and I was too lazy to negotiate with them, so I simply let it die.

senthil_rajasek 17y ago
"It helped that I was educating myself about Japan." What was the motivation and can you elaborate and share with us on how you did this?
- sridharvembu 17y ago
  I was always fascinated by Japan, particularly in the context of India . After we started, I started looking closely at Japanese companies as role models. They had figured out stuff over the years that is unbelievable. Even today, there exist some technologies that pretty much only the Japanese do well (and not only in well known industries). Take a look at this company for example: http://www.uniontool.co.jp/english/product_index.html http://www.uniontool.co.jp/english/product_index.html They make drill bits for printed circuit boards, drill bits finer than human hair, drill bits you cannot even see with the naked eye. The magic is years and years of patient, painstaking work, with occasional inspired leaps. That was good to know, particularly when we tended to get bored or tired.

senthil_rajasek 17y ago

"It helped that I was educating myself about Japan." What was the motivation and can you elaborate and share with us on how you did this?

sridharvembu 17y ago
I was always fascinated by Japan, particularly in the context of India . After we started, I started looking closely at Japanese companies as role models. They had figured out stuff over the years that is unbelievable. Even today, there exist some technologies that pretty much only the Japanese do well (and not only in well known industries). Take a look at this company for example: http://www.uniontool.co.jp/english/product_index.html http://www.uniontool.co.jp/english/product_index.html They make drill bits for printed circuit boards, drill bits finer than human hair, drill bits you cannot even see with the naked eye. The magic is years and years of patient, painstaking work, with occasional inspired leaps. That was good to know, particularly when we tended to get bored or tired.