Sramana Mitra, 2019: assembler, financial software and founding Tremend

Best of Bootstrapping, Sramana Mitra’s blog, July 2019: the opening of an interview first published in January 2018 as Part 1. I was then co-founder and managing partner of Tremend. Sramana Mitra’s introduction: Tremend, a services company built from Romania to over $5 million in revenue, trying to bootstrap a product using the services business. Topics: a first job on a game engine written in assembler, the move to financial software, and the founding of Tremend in 2005 with a former university colleague. Continued in Part 2.

§A year in assembler

“I worked for a year solely on the assembler. It was quite fun.”

Computer Science Department of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest from 1996, professional work from around 1998. “It wasn’t easy to get into this field like it is these days.” First job: a company implementing a game engine, where the team leader “had a particular vision of having the engine written in assembler; even the non-critical part.”

Elsewhere. Recorder, 2018, on the same first job, at a company aiming for the international video games market: “I received a test that I worked on for 3 days” („am primit un test pentru rezolvarea căruia am lucrat 3 zile”).

§Financial software, around 2002

“Then I wanted to get the feel of the enterprise environment. I worked on financial software also. That was 2002, roughly.”

After the game engines, enterprise software. Around that time a friend asked for my help building an ERP and asked me to start a company together. “We never really started that one though.”

§Weekend projects, then a few months in the US

“We caught the entrepreneurship bug. We got home and we started Tremend. That was 2005.”

Reunited with a former colleague from university. Both had day jobs and worked on “all kinds of personal projects on the weekends”. A friend who saw them suggested they start something: “We didn’t take that very seriously back then.” Then a couple of months of work in the US, and after that, Tremend.

Elsewhere. Recorder, 2018, on that first stay in Silicon Valley in 2004, with Ioan Cocan: “It was a very beautiful experience to see that energy we had only heard about.” („A fost o experienţă foarte frumoasă să vedem acea energie despre care doar auzisem.”)

§Better and faster

“We felt we could do better and faster.”

What brought them together: “We really loved what we were doing.” The aim: higher quality and making a difference. Both had worked in larger teams: “We had seen the dynamics.”