Download the MP3.

“Dial 1 for sales, dial 2 for support…” Ten years ago it cost over $10,000 to get a phone system with the advanced options we’re used to hearing when we call big companies. Having a professional-sounding phone system was a surprisingly big challenge for small businesses short on cash. Enter Siamak Taghaddos and David Hauser who launched GotVMail to offer that service at rates starting at only $10 per month in 2003 as they were graduating college. They launched their business with under $200,000 in capital and never raised any more money. They bootstrapped their way to profitability quickly, and are now driving over $10 million in annual revenue. Despite their success, Siamak and David don’t believe what’s gotten them this far will take them to the next level. So they’ve just rebranded their company Grasshopper and are getting ready to launch some new products.

Show sponsor: FreshBooks – an easy online invoicing provider used by Venture Voice

I cofounded a company called Sawhorse Media that's making sense of Twitter (Twitter was founded by past Venture Voice guest Ev Williams).

We decided to launch a new site called Venture Maven to make it easy to follow what VCs and angels are tweeting about. For example, if you were pitching Spark Capital, you could have checked Venture Maven yesterday to see one partner was at the dentist and a principal just got off painkillers after a knee surgery. Better open the meeting with a good joke.

Please let me know your feedback. We're also thinking of launching a similar site for founders and CEOs.

You can find Venture Voice on Twitter at @VentureVoice and me personally at @Gregory.