Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about a bit of metrics so we can pin the journey all the way to bootstrapping before you got a funded company model. How far did you get from a revenue point of view, customer metrics, employee metrics? What were the vital statistics? John Baker: We’re somewhere in the neighborhood of

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Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You think the unemployment pay from the government is preventing people from looking for jobs? Jan Bednar: 100%. People told us that on the phone. We called people from our database. Their mentality is, “Why would I work if I can make more money not working and I’m safe?” It’s a tough argument.

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Blackbaud Beating Expectations, Despite Short Term Challenges

Leading cloud software company for the non-profit sector Blackbaud (Nasdaq: BLKB) recently announced its second quarter results that surpassed market expectations even amid the current conditions. The company is worried about the short-term impact of the crisis on its financials but is continuing to invest in marketing efforts and product upgrades to tackle the conditions.

503rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Semyon Dukach, One Way Ventures

Semyon Dukach is Managing Partner at One Way Ventures, an immigrant founder focused VC fund.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that we should discuss about that bootstrapping period before we switch into the next inflection point? John Baker: One thing I would like to discuss is how we differentiated from the competition. In my case, I spent a lot of time on the engineering and design side.

Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Where in California did you open? Jan Bednar: In Redlands. It’s a DisneyLand warehouse. We were hiring new people and trying to keep the culture. It was a lot of fun. The first couple of years was really tough. Then in 2018, we went from $11 million to $28 million. We moved to

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Catching Up On Readings: Q3 IPO Trends

This discussion from Yahoo Finance looks at the latest IPO trends amid Palantir, Asana public debuts and a busy Q3 that saw 81 IPOs, raising $28.5 billion. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Shopify has done one of the most aggressive and successful PaaS strategies where they have invited developers to develop and extend their platform. Did you take advantage of that with your software? Did you integrate with the Shopify platform? Was the Shopify marketplace a good source of leads for you? Jan Bednar: That

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