Bootstrapped a RegTech Venture to $20 Million

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RegTech is emerging to become a category of its own with numerous risk and compliance issues getting addressed by technology solutions. PerformLine Founder and CEO Alex Baydin has bootstrapped a wonderful business and is now doing a private equity-driven roll-up within the space.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Alex Baydin: I am the Founder and CEO of PerformLine. I was born in Boston, but shortly thereafter, my family moved to New Jersey in a town called Morristown. I’ve been here quite a large percentage of my life but also traveled and spent some stints outside of this area.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you go to school?

Alex Baydin: I went to Cornell University.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of background?

Alex Baydin: Non-technical. I am a graduate of hotel administration. In recent years, they’ve combined that with the Johnson School of Business.

Sramana Mitra: When did you come out of college?

Alex Baydin: I graduated in 1997. My first job out of college was working for Bloomberg. I sold Bloomberg terminals and trading systems in the financial services space. That was the heart and start of the Web 1.0 days. Looking back, that was a really great place to start a career. You cannot get away from sales if you’re going to be a founder and CEO whether you’re selling your wares to customers or selling your vision to investors.

Learning a very professional and curated sales process that Bloomberg had, had an overwhelming impact on my career. It was also an exciting time because so much was happening with their technology. They were moving off of the dedicated terminals. The open Bloomberg platform was a big initiative back then. Of course, there are lots of opportunities to join recently funded Web 1.0 companies.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after Bloomberg?

Alex Baydin: There was a collection of internet startups that I went to work for. Some did quite well and some ran out of money and fizzled out. I found myself gravitating toward AdTech. Part of that was because of the location being in New York.

Sramana Mitra: That’s what was there.

Alex Baydin: The ad agencies were here. I spent a fair amount of time in different AdTech companies. Some that come to mind that was fun rides are Juno, NetZero, and Qwigo.

Sramana Mitra: All in sales?

Alex Baydin: Sales, product, and business development. I left Bloomberg in 2000. I started PerformLine in 2007.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the origin of PerformLine. What stirred the idea? What was the concept?

Alex Baydin: Part of me wanted to be a business owner. We had a close family friend who was 10 years older than me and was the first entrepreneur in my life. He happened to be a very good storyteller. He would often share stories about all the fun he was having. A lot of it was type two fun like staying up all night to meet a client’s deadline or some great story from trying to raise money. That was the first kernel of where I had someone in my life who thought that working can be a lot of fun. I correlated it to running your own business.

Our conversation continues here .

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