Must-read Posts on Artificial Intelligence

My deep concerns over the impact that Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, and over-automation will eventually have on society have led me to write several thought-provoking articles to help raise awareness while course correction is still possible. Whichever way the future unfolds, we do have some time in hand. The kind of mass scale automation that

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Building a Cutting-Edge Telecollaboration Company: John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. John worked on Minority Report after finishing his PhD at the MIT Media Lab. Read on how he parlayed that experience into a supercool company that is scaling nicely, while reinventing collaboration. Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Where were you born, raised and in what

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Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Taylor has bootstrapped Wiredrive over a 17-year period to about $10 million. Today, he has options ahead to grow organically or raise money. Either way, an interesting journey. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were

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Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking when you became profitable? Guy Mucklow: It was four years after we started, so 2005. It’s interesting because it begs the question of going down the VC route or bootstrapping. Increasingly, a lot of tech entrepreneurs that I meet who have taken funding regret doing that. I know

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Thursday, September 15 – 321st 1M/1M Mentoring Roundtable For Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 321st FREE online 1M/1M roundtable mentoring session on Thursday, September 15, 2016, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea to Sramana Mitra. You’ll gain straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and she’ll answer any

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Adrian Ridner, CEO of Study.com (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The last question I have from a trend point of view is, are you seeing this interest in lifelong learning translating into how long people subscribe to your program? Adrian Ridner: It shows up in two ways. One is people who subscribe for longer but move around a lot of different subject areas.

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Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of conversion rates did you experience? Are you willing to discuss that? Christian Vanek: Sure, we’re an open book. From our website, we have about 1% conversion rate of visitors to trial or free customers. From free customers to paid customers, we have about 0.7% conversion rate. For our trial customers that come

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Catching Up On Readings: Startup Transatlantic M&As

The Startup Transatlantic M&As. US vs EU report is going to be presented at the European Innovation Day conference on September 12th in Mountain View, Calif. The report which looked at over 6,000 startup deals over the past five years says that US acquirers completed 82% of the deals. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.