Bootstrapped Using Services to a $300+ Million Exit

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Victor Allis bootstrapped Quintiq to $30M, raised funding, and then sold the company for over $300M. ActiVote is his second startup, currently self-funded.

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

Victor Allis: I was born in the Netherlands to a middle-class family. My dad worked as a plant manager in the aircraft industry. My mom took care of five kids. I was the youngest of five with four sisters. In school, I was the second-best in math in the Netherlands. I took part in competitions. I became a math student with the dream of becoming a math professor.

I discovered computers, and so I thought maybe I’ll be a computer science professor. I did a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence. I was part of programming competitions. We were once beaten by Stanford. I had this whole technology background. I was always on track to be an academic.

I was invited into a company where I’ve been teaching artificial intelligence and programming. Two years later, I realized that they didn’t want to keep doing what I did in that company. I stepped out with four of my ex-students who I’d brought into that company. We founded a business. That was unexpected. I wasn’t planning to become an entrepreneur.

Sramana Mitra: This is all happening in the Netherlands?

Victor Allis: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What year?

Victor Allis: I was born in 1965 and founded the company in 1997. I was 32.

Sramana Mitra: Is this the company we’re talking about or is this a previous company?

Victor Allis: There are two companies that I founded. One is a company that I grew to a hundred million dollars in revenue. Then after I retired from that company and sold it, I founded another company which is much more of a passion project. We made an app that allows people to confidently vote in every election.

Sramana Mitra: The first company is really important. So in 1997, you started a company with four of your students. What was that company?

Victor Allis: We solved supply chain problems. Our attack line was solving the world’s planning puzzles. The main idea is that in many companies when they start growing, there’s always the puzzle of who does what in what sequence. What we did was we made smart algorithms that helped solve the daily puzzles. We made software that ran our customers’ operations. Walmart has 7,000 trucks. They need to deliver all the goods to keep their stores replenished. All their trucks are scheduled with our software in real-time.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to 1997. You’re starting this company in the Netherlands and you were going to solve some supply chain problems. How do you put one foot before the other?

Victor Allis: We were working at another company. They didn’t want to be a software company; they wanted to be a consultancy company. So we quit. Then I went to a few banks and I needed about $200,000. They were willing to give us $200,000 as long as we put up our houses. We were sitting in a very small office. For four days a week, I contracted the founders out to do programming services who needed that. There was a high demand in 1998 when we started doing that.

The year 2000 was looming and everybody was getting their IT systems. Four days a week, we were contracting and making money. It gave us three days and seven nights to really work hard on the product. We worked our asses off for two years. The great news was we had no investors to work for. We could take our time and get it right. After those two years, we made a little bit of money. We paid half our loan and had some money in the bank, and with a product that we could sell.

Our conversation continues here.

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