Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Marty Beard, CEO of LiveOps (Part 1)

We’ve featured LiveOps on the blog before, when I interviewed then CEO Maynard Webb for my Entrepreneur Journeys series. Now, the company has a new CEO, Marty Beard, and has gone through many other interesting changes over the years. Sramana Mitra: Hi, Marty. We are speaking with LiveOps for a second time. I spoke with

Read Full Article »

Featured Videos

Bootstrapping a $40M Niche E-Commerce Business: Stroll CEO Dan Roitman (Part 6)

Sramana: Tell me about hiring your early key players. What roles did they play, and how did you find them? Dan Roitman: My best friend served as the VP of marketing for about two and a half years. Ultimately, I realized that it was not going to work out. I had to let him go

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping a $40M Niche E-Commerce Business: Stroll CEO Dan Roitman (Part 5)

Sramana: What platforms did you use to advertise? Dan Roitman: In our initial phase we used acquisition email. We did that for the first eight months. We then built the business one or two channels at a time. We focused on building out one to two channels per year. I think people fail because they

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping a $40M Niche E-Commerce Business: Stroll CEO Dan Roitman (Part 4)

Sramana: What were some of the early keys to success? What did you do right very early on that led you to have a successful business? Dan Roitman: I was fortunate in one key aspect. Very early on I aligned myself with thought leaders. In 2001, after I found out that we would have to

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping a $40M Niche E-Commerce Business: Stroll CEO Dan Roitman (Part 3)

Sramana: You started selling language learning products online in 2001. How did the business build from there? Dan Roitman: We had been selling the product as early as 2001, but we really started focusing on it in the middle of 2002. We became one of the largest resellers in the audio books division. Based on

Read Full Article »

Roundtable Recap: October 18 – Carbon Trading In Bulgaria

Soon I am off to India to deliver the keynote address at TiECon in Kerala and help judge a 1M/1M Pitch-Fest competition next Friday, October 26. Then, on Thursday, November 1, I will be leading the Kolkata 1M/1M Pitch-Fest Competition at iLEAD. As part of a joint effort with local leaders to help invigorate entrepreneur

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping a $40M Niche E-Commerce Business: Stroll CEO Dan Roitman (Part 2)

Sramana: You said that you had to pivot the business into a different area. How did you go about doing that? Dan Roitman: It took me about two years to focus on the language learning aspect of the business. I did a lot of research doing the two years I was trying to replace the

Read Full Article »

Kolkata and Kerala This October

I am heading to India today. The first event I will be at is TiECon Kerala (October 25 and 26) where on the 26th morning, I will be giving a special keynote, and on the 26th afternoon, we will have a pitch fest where six 1M/1M scholarships will be awarded to entrepreneurs in Kerala. And

Read Full Article »