Becoming a startup founder often seems glamorous from the outside, with many people envisioning lavish lifestyles, effortless money raising, and complete freedom by owning your own business when thinking about it. This fantasy of discussing million-dollar deals as one enjoys a fancy dinner, however, quickly breaks when one takes a look at the arduous emotional and financial rollercoasters most founders go through at every stage of the process.
Over his 20 years-long entrepreneurial journey, 4-time founder Ankush Gera got to experience these rollercoasters time after time. Now, with a 100% success rate despite having bootstrapped all of his startups, Gera is leveraging the experience he earned with sweat, tears, and blood to help entrepreneurs going through the same challenges. Junglee Games, for example, has pulled in $300M in revenue, making Gera’s company one of the biggest in entertainment.
Currently based in Miami, Gera spends most of his time as an angel investor and thought leader among other founder-turned-investors. With a global reach, he has invested in over 150 bootstrapped startups and helped an even greater number of entrepreneurs find their way in an increasingly challenging ecosystem. Gera’s support comes in many other ways, especially in the form of empathy and guidance.
“I could tell you from personal experience that you could be running a one, two, three, or ten billion dollar business and will still have incredibly difficult days,” Gera said in a recent interview. “If you just need a sounding board, I will do my best to accommodate founders who are just running in a tough spot while they’re building their business.”
Most of Gera’s efforts have been directed toward helping talented founders and investors who are working on creating products with actual purpose. To Gera, this is a way to pay forward and help change the narrative of the “Alpha CEO,” which he sees as corrosive and detrimental to the entrepreneurial world. Even while he recognizes many of the startups he supports don’t really need it; startups are happy to have it on board thanks to his unmatched experience and empathy.
“I just love supporting companies, and frankly, a lot of times, they don’t need my capital. I’m a retail small sort of investor. There’s all the Sequoias and Andreessens are chasing these companies anyway,” adds Gera. “Sometimes you have to pull favors to invest in these businesses, but I just love the fact that I have a really strong network of friends who are these humans that run and lead and invest and co-create some of these businesses.”
Having developed a unique blueprint for bootstrapping a successful business, Gera is happy to share this tool with those founders he invests in and mentors. He believes that by requiring as little funding from third parties as possible, founders have an easy time making their vision a reality without getting lost in the noise. While bootstrapping can certainly make things more difficult in other ways, this battle-tested mentor is there to help at every stage of the process.
“I don’t know if it’s a wave or just a drop in the ocean. I’m just trying to do my part to help,” explains Gera when talking about his contributions to the ecosystem. “But yeah, there’s lots of people with bigger forces that are trying to support and create.”
Wave or drop, Gera’s impact on the entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem is undeniable. By helping and motivating founders to stay true to their vision, he is allowing a new generation to experience what entrepreneurship is really all about: changing the world in some way. As Gera himself says, this might be the “most incredible and coolest decade because of what is going to come out of it.”
Published by: Martin De Juan
