Bootstrapping to $15 Million: Ernie Bray, CEO of ACD (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When you were actually processing claims, what did you see that triggered this idea? Ernie Bray: What I saw was that claims technology systems were outdated. They were just green screen technologies at that time. I’ll give you an example. When I was looking at AAA, appraisers would go out and take photographs of

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Bootstrapping to $15 Million: Ernie Bray, CEO of ACD (Part 2)

Ernie Bray: After three years, we ended up shutting down the business. It was my first taste of starting something on my own from scratch. We didn’t make much money, but during that time we didn’t know how to monetize something on the Internet. This was new, but it was the thing that clicked for me.

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Why Do I Keep Getting NO From Investors?

If you want funding, you need to start with a business that is fundable.  Ask any serious advisor or investor and you will get an absolute truth: 99% of the ideas as they come are NOT fundable. From here you have only three choices. One is not so smart. The other two are just fine.

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Michael Martin, CTO of nfrastructure (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Are there other really interesting, far out there, use cases that you’ve encountered that are worth discussing? Michael Martin: We have one going on in the lab right now. It’s an interesting one. It is a replenishment application. We have an innovation lab where our engineers work on thought provokers that we bring to our

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Bootstrapping to $15 Million: Ernie Bray, CEO of ACD (Part 1)

Ernie leveraged his domain knowledge in auto insurance claims processing, and has built a robust, sustainable business. He uses a virtual workforce strategy to scale. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances? Ernie Bray: I was

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Catching Up On Readings: TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015

The TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2015 took place in San Francisco from September 21-23 where from a thousand startups, 25 were chosen to compete in the Startup Battlefield competition. This feature looks at the highlights and winner of the $50,000 prize money and the Disrupt Cup, Agrilyst. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Michael Martin, CTO of nfrastructure (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. You were a services and solutions company. It sounds like you have built this whole system from scratch. How is it that there aren’t off-the-shelf systems out there from the people who do retail enterprise software? Michael Martin: There are and they’re coming. For us as an integrator, we’re not as

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Michael Martin, CTO of nfrastructure (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’m trying to understand what are good interesting Internet of Things use cases, not the process of how you service clients. Michael Martin: One interesting use case from the experiment stage is we work with a large grocer who has typical business objectives that a large grocery retailer would have. In that experiment phase,

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