If you haven't already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. As part of our coverage of entrepreneurship far away from Silicon Valley, we bring you a conversation with Mike Carter, Founder of eGroup, in Charleston, South Carolina. Typically, these environments have bred bootstrapped companies, and bootstrapping using services continues to be a popular method. Here is our conversation from 2014. Sramana Mitra: Mike, let's start with the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of circumstances leads up to the entrepreneurial story? Mike Carter: I was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina which is a coastal town here in the Southeast. My parents are both originally from the area but I grew up all around the country and some places abroad. My father was a career air force fighter pilot. That meant that he spent a lot of time traveling to different military installations