Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The sales model at this point is still direct selling? John Baker: Yes, still the same. It had expanded into going to conferences to figure out who to talk to. Now we were talking to Deans or Provosts.  Sramana Mitra: How was the average deal size moving?

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Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In the very beginning, when you were going door to door asking people to sign up, what were you charging? John Baker: In the early days, I built a model that was based on cost per student. The faculty members that I reached out to didn’t have the budget for this. I said,

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Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you choose the first few customers by some threshold? Were they doing a certain amount of business already? Jan Bednar: It was almost the opposite. They were companies that nobody wanted to do business with. A lot of the fulfillment companies in 2015 didn’t want to work with small startups because they

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Colors: Monsoon in Goa, White Church 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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Cisco Needs an Aggressive 5G Strategy

Where most technology giants are delivering a strong growth, networking player Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) appears to be struggling. Cisco recently announced its quarterly results that surpassed market expectations. However, a weaker outlook, on account of the global conditions, sent the stock tumbling 6% in the after-hours trading session.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 1)

This is a terrific story of bootstrapped entrepreneurship in EdTech. The company also has a great PaaS strategy. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

503rd Roundtable Recording on October 1, 2020: With Semyon Dukach, One Way Ventures

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: 503rd 1Mby1M Roundtable October 1, 2020: With Semyon Dukach, One Way Ventures

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Using Services from Sweden

European entrepreneurs often successfully bootstrap using services. The chasing investors from the get go disease is less prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic, although the virus from Silicon Valley has been traveling now to all corners of the world. Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo share their journey, having crossed $7

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