Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: Scott Hartsman, CEO of Trion Worlds (Part 1)

The Online Gaming world has changed dramatically over the last five years. Business models have changed. Funding models have changed. Development models have changed. Read my interview with Trion Worlds CEO Scott Hartsman to get a grip of where things are going. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with an introduction to Trion. Let’s introduce our audience

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: John Miller, Chief Operating Officer of Hands-On Learning (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What do you forecast will happen to these online universities that are charging almost full price or maybe 10% less than the physical schools? John Miller: There’s an emergence of a new model that is far more cost-effective, that I think will become pervasive. An example is an organization called StraighterLine, which is

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Catching Up On Readings: Economics of Pricelessness

This article on Ribbonfarm says that in order to manage the economy better, it is important to put a price on things that are considered priceless, such as life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, nature, human dignity, religious values and the welfare of children. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bootstrapping a Cloud Startup with Services on Force.com from London: Alex Fuller, Co-Founder and CTO of CloudSense (Part 5)

Sramana: Did the AppExchange or Salesforce teams generate leads for you even if you had to do the selling? Alex Fuller: We definitely had some leads coming off of the AppExchange. Our own direct selling efforts accounted for the vast majority of our leads and closed deals. I include the leg work of staying in

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Building A Profitable, Steady Growth Subscription Business: Expensify CEO David Barrett (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Why do you need to filter the needs? From what you described, it sounds like the system is pretty self-correcting or self-converting? David Barrett: It is. Most of our time is spent minimizing the number of times that you will need to reach out to us. For example, it’s possible that we can

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: John Miller, Chief Operating Officer of Hands-On Learning (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about your business of working with a thousand universities and hundred thousand students. What does that business entail? John Miller: That business focuses on supplying the lab kits that are required for STEM courses. What our company has done is develop a multi-solution package depending upon what experience the school and

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Bootstrapping a Cloud Startup with Services on Force.com from London: Alex Fuller, Co-Founder and CTO of CloudSense (Part 4)

Sramana: During the nine-month bootstrapping phase, how many people were focused on the services business and how many people were focused on product development? I’m also curious about how your business breaks down between Croatia and London. Alex Fuller: The business breaks down 50/50 between London and Croatia. We also bring consultants from Croatia onsite with

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Building A Profitable, Steady Growth Subscription Business: Expensify CEO David Barrett (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: At that point, you said you were charging subscriptions. Was anyone paying for subscription? David Barrett: That’s interesting as well. At that time, we weren’t charging. In fact, we didn’t intend to charge for a long time. We raised our million dollars, did our pivot and were doing expense reports. This business was going to

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