Subbu Rama, co-founder of BitFusion, a service that gathers unused processing power to create a decentralised supercomputer. Subbu’s 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? – Steve Jobs
What CEO do you follow? — Steve Jobs, posthumously.
Favourite online tool? — Slack
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?—I wish I’d started a company

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

3 Key Points:
Look for strategic investment partners who’ll 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 – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible – 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

Shocked Subbu Wouldn't Accept my $10M Offer after Raising $1M This Year, EP 282: Subbu Rama

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders