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Subbu Rama, co-founder of BitFusion, a service that gathers unused processing power to create a decentralised supercomputer. Subbu\\u2019s hoping to create something as big as VMware. Listen as Subbu answers the hard questions about splitting equity, raising capital, and building sales at the beginning of a big idea.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? \\u2013 Steve Jobs
What CEO do you follow? \\u2014 Steve Jobs, posthumously.
Favourite online tool? \\u2014 Slack
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\\u2014 Yes
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?\\u2014I wish I\\u2019d started a company

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:45 \\u2013 Nathan\\u2019s introduction
01:50 \\u2013 Welcoming Subbu to the show
02:35 \\u2013 BitFusion grabs unused processing power to speed up clients\\u2019 processing
03:23 \\u2013 Started in February 2015
03:36 \\u2013 Based in Austin, Texas
03:50 \\u2013 Subbu gave up a $250k salary at Dell to create BitFusion
04:20 \\u2013 \\u201cThe world is moving beyond CPUs...big computation is becoming more complex\\u201d
04:30 \\u2013 \\u201cI thought - how do we bring hypercomputing to the normals?\\u201d
04:45 \\u2013 Subbu\\u2019s co-founders quit Samsung and Intel
05:15 \\u2013 The co-founders split their equity equally - 33% each
06:01 \\u2013 \\u201cPeople don\\u2019t put the same energy in all the time...but in the end it all evens out\\u201d
06:45 \\u2013 \\u201cI would recommend doing whatever you\\u2019re comfortable with\\u201d
07:26 \\u2013 Raised $1.5 million in a seed round
07:42 \\u2013 Went through the TechStars incubator
08:00 \\u2013 Debt round via convertible note
08:40 \\u2013 Nathan: \\u201cAre you making sales?\\u201d
09:05 \\u2013 Have around 6 customers
09:40 \\u2013 Customers pay $10-100k per year
09:55 \\u2013 Looked for customers they could close with in 1-3 months
10:20 \\u2013 Gained 6 customers in 2 months
10:40 \\u2013 Revenue in the last year has been $100-500k
11:11 \\u2013 Losing less than $100k per month in salaries - team of 9 people
11:50 \\u2013 Hope to have enough customers in 2016 to run a Series A
12:25 \\u2013 \\u201cI look at strategic investors, not valuation\\u201d
12:55 \\u2013 \\u201cWe want investors who will help us\\u201d
13:29 \\u2013 Subbu wouldn\\u2019t sell for $20 million right now
13:50 \\u2013 \\u201cWe think this could be as big as VMWare\\u201d
14:18 \\u2013 Connect with Subbu on Twitter
15:45 \\u2013 The Famous Five

3 Key Points:
Look for strategic investment partners who\\u2019ll bring something besides money to the table
Sales are everything. Start bringing in customers as quickly as you can.
Computation is becoming more complex: services that capitalise on super-fast processing are going to succeed

Resources Mentioned:
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Host Gator \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Leadpages \\u2013 The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible \\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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