Entrepreneurs: Beware of the Twilight Zone of VC-Funded Startups

The MIT Technology Review just published an article titled Why Startups Are Struggling where it looks for answers to the question: Even amid the venture capital boom of the past few years, entrepreneurs are finding it harder to build big, enduring companies. What does this mean for the future of innovation?

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A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did IBM figure out, given that you have a strange background from their perspective, that you would be good at this stuff? Peter Gassner: My first internship was at IBM. Sramana Mitra: They noted you then. Peter Gassner: Yes, “That’s a kid that can work hard. He gets work done. He’s got

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Also, what you have going in your favour is that the market is starting to understand that on the Internet, content is the brand. I think that understanding is going to drive further and further into the industry in general. Yaron Galai: I don’t view Facebook as being in the business of social networks

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tom Bianculli, Vice President of Technology Office at Zebra Technologies (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a few customer use cases that are significant and are exhibiting interesting trends through your work with these customers? Tom Bianculli: Retail, I mentioned, is a significant part of our business. There’s no secret about what’s going on there with regard to e-commerce competition and the desire to create online analytics for

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The publishers are paying a lot more than $10 a month. Yaron Galai: We kept it, initially, at $10 a month but it couldn’t sustain them that way. The publishers said, “If you let us pay on a per-click basis, then we know exactly how many audience we get.” We pivoted on the

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A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Computer Science is not ambiguous. It’s clear and logical. Part of the thing that I’ve observed at this point in my life, having seen a little bit of life, is that there is a lot of ambiguity and a lot of lack in logic in how human beings operate. I’m a very rational,

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tom Bianculli, Vice President of Technology Office at Zebra Technologies (Part 1)

Further view into the use cases and trends in various verticals pertaining to IoT. This interviews looks at retail, transportation, and healthcare. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself as well as Zebra. Tom Bianculli: I oversee the technology office here at Zebra Technologies. My team incubates new opportunities that are adjacent to

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The ratings and the Internet recommendations were free. There were no monetization model around any of that? Yaron Galai: That’s right. Sramana Mitra: The first monetization effort was with the paid recommendation of external content into these larger publishers. What was wrong? Why did the first iteration fail?