Dennis Ong

Startup CTO turned solo bootstrapped founder.

I've been fortunate to have led the tech team at a VC-funded startup (Whispli) through an exciting growth phase, where we went through the Y-Combinator startup accelerator program, raised our $2.8M seed round from top US & Australian investors, and tripled the size of the dev team.

I've also been building and growing my own apps on the side to varying levels of success. Some ideas failed in gaining any traction after years of development (TappleCourt), while others have seen better adoption (DrawSQL and PongUp!). Lots of lessons can be learnt in both cases.

Having experienced both VC-funded and bootstrapped startups, for now I'm more interested in taking the “indie” approach to my company of one, focused on profitability, rather than on rapid growth.

My current focus is on bootstrapping and growing DrawSQL and PongUp. I'm also devoting a small portion of my time to consulting and helping other founders build their MVP.