Greg Gianforte

RightNow Technologies

Bootstrapping Your Company
41 minutes, 18.9mb, recorded 2006-04-25
Greg Gianforte

At the 2006 MySQL User's Conference, Greg Gianforte, CEO, President, and Founder of RightNow Technologies, presents an alternative to established business practise - "bootstrapping" a company. His strategy throws business plans and raising venture capital out the window, and instead focusses on sales and generating profit.

Gianforte, who started his own business, RightNow, in his spare bedroom, now heads a large organization which specializes in helping businesses provide a better customer experience for their clients. He turned a profit by figuring out what customers wanted and were willing to pay for. Traditional business models do not allow for enough time with the customer, and delay the sales process. The upshot of skipping established practices is that finding out feasibility of an idea is faster, plus the sales process starts sooner.

Bootstrapping is simply finding innovative ways of getting revenue streams going. With that goal in mind, Gianforte outlines three major rules to bootstrapping a business: sales is the number one job, you have to be profitable but not cheap, and ignore the experts - most of whom have attended business schools and not started their own businesses.


Greg Gianforte has led RightNow from its founding in 1997 to 30 consecutive quarters of revenue growth, 13 consecutive quarters of cash-flow positive performance and a successful IPO. His market vision, leadership, entrepreneurial philosophy and commitment to ethical business practices has enabled RightNow to consistently grow—during a period when many other software companies have stumbled—and to achieve remarkable levels of customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Ernst & Young awarded Gianforte the Pacific Northwest 2003 Entrepreneur of the Year for the software category. He founded Brightwork, a pioneering developer of network management applications, in 1986. Gianforte sold the company to McAfee Associates in 1994. He was retained by McAfee to run its North American sales operation. During his tenure, McAfee was selected by Fortune Magazine—based primarily on its Internet selling approach—as one of the "10 Coolest Companies in America."

Gianforte is also the author of Bootstrapping Your Business: Start And Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money. He holds a BE in electrical engineering and an MS in computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology.

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