One of the most exciting trends in the tech industry currently is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Developer Ecosystems. Entrepreneurs looking for a capital-efficient strategy should seriously consider bootstrapping by piggybacking on these PaaS players.

This course takes a deep dive into Bootstrapping by Piggybacking on PaaS platforms.

1. How to Bootstrap Startups by Piggybacking with Sramana Mitra

The company that has knocked the ball out of the park with its PaaS strategy is Salesforce. They launched their platform over a decade back, and many substantial companies, and numerous sustainable small businesses, have been built on it.

Veeva, for example, was built this way with a small amount of capital, and today boasts over $1B in revenue and over $20 billion in market cap.

My hypothesis is that of the 200+ SaaS companies that have achieved scale, we would see a set that would break out and become significant PaaS players.

This means the industry would have 20-50 PaaS platforms with serious developer eco-systems and app marketplaces. The PaaS vendors would want to sell the apps developed on their platforms to their customer bases, take 30% in platform commission, and help support robust businesses while scaling themselves exponentially.

Once you go over the methodology of piggybacking on PaaS platforms, consider learning about other bootstrapping techniques.

1. Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later with Sramana Mitra

2. Bootstrapping a Startup with a Paycheck with Sramana Mitra

3. Bootstrapping a Startup with Services with Sramana Mitra

4. How to Bootstrap a Startup to Exit with Sramana Mitra

5. How To Succeed As A Solo Entrepreneur with Sramana Mitra

Though we love bootstrapping, we never rule out funding.

The following set of courses addresses the realities of startup funding at different stages, from Pre-seed to Series A. Use these courses as your guides. Get to know how investors think, so you can speak their language and attain that elusive holy grail of investor-entrepreneur fit.

1. Alternatives to Unicorn Chasing Investors with Sramana Mitra

2. How Pre-Seed Investors Think About Startups with Sramana Mitra

3. How Seed Investors Think About Startups with Sramana Mitra

4. Post-Seed and Pre-Series A Investors on Startups with Sramana Mitra

Here you have it. If you master these essential skills, you’d have an edge over many of your competitors.

If you have any specific questions, come and see me at a 1Mby1M free roundtable.

P.S. We’re looking to partner with community leaders who write blogs, teach and mentor entrepreneurs, and help support startup ecosystems in every corner of the world, no matter how small or how remote. I have written about my own journey building startup ecosystems around the world, and how you can draw from my lessons from the trenches. If you’re interested in partnering with 1Mby1M, please consider joining our ambassador program.

For more information, please check out the external resources.

Quavo Co-founder David Chmielewski transitioned from a developer to an entrepreneur by leveraging his solid domain knowledge in a particular area of FinTech: dispute resolution for credit card transactions. He and his cofounders effectively used bootstrapping using services and piggybacked on the Pega Systems platform.

StoreConnect CEO Mikel Lindsaar has built a services company in Australia and spawned six SaaS products out of it. One of them, StoreConnect, is a terrific Bootstrapping by Piggybacking story on top of Salesforce.com. He has exited four of the apps, and expects to grow StoreConnect to $100M+ in revenue. Terrific story!

Runecast CEO Stan Markov and his four cofounders have built a wonderful business from Brno in the Czech Republic. A lot of Bootstrapping by Piggybacking principles have been applied to gain leverage.

Peter Gassner is a self-described late bloomer. In a wonderfully authentic interview, Peter describes here how he turned his middle-age crisis into a multi-billion dollar market cap company. Veeva, when we had this conversation in 2016, was doing well over $500 million in revenue and trading at a market cap of over $4 billion. Veeva was built on Salesforce and went public in 2013. There’s nothing foo foo about this company. It’s raw execution. I love this story.