Bootstrapping With A Paycheck to YCombinator and $10M Series A: Ryan Chan, CEO of UpKeep (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Ryan took a hobby project that he bootstrapped with a paycheck and managed to get into YCombinator. From there, he raised a $10M Series A from a top-tier Silicon Valley firm, Emergence Capital. Excellent execution thus far. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start from the very beginning of

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: As you probably know, my background is in computer architecture. I was in the parallel computing part of MIT’s projects back in the mid-90s. Funding for chip companies has gone down tremendously. Almost no one in the Indian venture ecosystem is willing or equipped to do chips. I’m actually thrilled to hear that

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Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Dispel CEO Ethan Schmertzler (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Can you suggest areas that we should cover in this discussion that the audience that we’re speaking to should know about in what you’re doing? Ethan Schmertzler: We’re not the only company that’s starting to explore the idea of using virtual machines as dynamic disposable environments for protecting assets. You can think of

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Catching Up On Readings: Unicorn IPOs 2019

This feature from PitchBook analyses the IPO frenzy from unicorns. So far, there have been some hits and some misses. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start talking about Endiya Partners. How big is the fund? What is your preference in terms of where you want to invest in? What kind of stage? Sateesh Andra: Our fund is around 175 crores. We’ve made 12 investments. Sramana Mitra: That’s about $35 million. Sateesh Andra: Yes. In the early days,

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Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Dispel CEO Ethan Schmertzler (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Are you selling directly to enterprise CIO’s or are you an OEM into a Cisco, for instance? How do you go to market? Ethan Schmertzler: We, almost always, go directly to CIO’s and CTO’s of large institutions because they’re trying to make users’ lives easier and more efficient, but they confront the security

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Sateesh Andra was recorded in April 2019. Endiya Partners’ founding team – Managing Director Sateesh Andra, Managing Director Dr. Ramesh Byrapaneni, Director Abhishek Srivastava – talk about their Seed and Pre-Series A

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Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Dispel CEO Ethan Schmertzler (Part 1)

In this interview, Ethan discusses Moving Target Networks, a cyber defense technology. The company does about $10M ARR. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Dispel. Ethan Schmertzler: I’m the CEO and one of the Co-Founders of Dispel, which is  a cyber security and cyber defense firm that

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