Erik Allebest: In 1998, my Chess Club President friend said, “Let’s build a website together.” He built a platform for me to sell Chess equipment online. It became known as Wholesale Chess. It became the largest chess retailer online. This was before Amazon. I sold the business of teaching and moved to e-commerce. I did
Sramana Mitra: What you’re describing is the journey of a lot of techies into entrepreneurship as well. It’s not about technology looking for a problem to solve. It’s about identifying the problem and then figuring out how to solve that problem using technology. In AI, this is a major issue. Nitesh Chawla: It truly is.
Solo entrepreneurs get a bad rap, but they’re kicking ass out there! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Erik Allebest: I was born in Southern California. I was born to an entrepreneurial family. My dad
Nitesh bootstrapped Aunalytics while keeping his academic job at Notre Dame. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 555th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, December 2, 2021, 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 questions. Others
Sramana Mitra: On the small fund team, one thing that we’ve heard is that they are exiting in the Series C and Series D round. Is that part of your game plan? Sandeep Sardana: It’s not off the table. We haven’t done it, but it’s not off the table. It depends on your portfolio construction.
It is that time of the year when America contemplates gratitude. Even though I didn’t grow up with this tradition, I have come to really appreciate this collective annual focus on evaluating our lives and our many blessings.
Sramana Mitra: Two-sided marketplaces tend to be capital-intensive but you have found an entrepreneur who has managed to do a capital-efficient two-sided marketplace scale. What is the secret of that? Sandeep Sardana: The entrepreneur is a do-it-all entrepreneur. He’s a top-level CTO himself. He has a great business mind. He built a small and very