Scaling to a $700M Exit: Zain Jaffer, CEO of Vungle (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What happened to the $200,000 worth of pre-orders? Were you able to fulfill it? Zain Jaffer: No. We knew that there was a demand, but we underestimated how long it would take to build the product out. We weren’t able to do anything with that. Customers were asking when this was going to

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Bootstrapping by Services from Wisconsin: SignalWire CEO Anthony Minessale (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a bit about how you built the company. You started in 2002. How did you get your first customers? How did you acquire them? Where did you focus? What was the positioning?  Anthony Minessale: When we worked on the open source project, our primary focus was providing functionality to the missing

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Colors: Basque Hermitage, San Juan de Gaztelugatxe III

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and

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Scaling to a $700M Exit: Zain Jaffer, CEO of Vungle (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happened with Gokul? Zain Jaffer: Gokul became a very pivotal figure. When we got into Angel Pad, a lot of people didn’t believe in our idea. It was very disheartening. There must have been at least 10 different advisors who came in and said, “This is never going to work.” Gokul was

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Best of Bootstrapping: ActiveCampaign CEO Bootstraps Using Services to $40M

ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom has built a disciplined, profitable business and scaled it to $40 million in 2017 revenue. The company was first bootstrapped using services, and later raised ~$20 million in funding. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in

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Bootstrapping by Services from Wisconsin: SignalWire CEO Anthony Minessale (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year is this happening? Anthony Minessale: 2002. Sramana Mitra: What was the competitive landscape like? Were RingCentral and Grasshopper around? Anthony Minessale: It was right before that. We were alone in the wild when we were doing this.

February 20 – 473rd 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 473rd FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, February 20, 2020, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your

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Roundtable Recap: February 13 – You Have 30 Seconds to Capture My Attention

As our guest this week, we had Deepak Jeevankumar, Managing Director at Dell Technologies Capital. We discussed his fund’s focus and preferences. PhonePass As for entrepreneur pitches, first up we had Shantanu Bhattacharya from Canberra, Australia, pitch PhonePass, a two-factor authentication technology. Liglo Then we had Nickson Zachary from Nairobi, Kenya, pitch Liglo, a mobile

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