Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Second Data Venture

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  In 2014, we covered John Wallace’s entrepreneur journey with DataSong, a bootstrapped venture that achieved a successful exit. LiftLab is his second company, and he is applying the same rigorous, lean, disciplined approach. Sramana Mitra: John, welcome to the show again. It looks like you’re

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May 2 – 638th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 638th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, May 2, 2024, at 8 a.m. PDT / 11 a.m. EDT / 5 p.m. CEST / 8:30 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,

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Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Can you double-click down and talk about your validation process in this company, given what you experienced in the previous RJ Talyor: One thing that I’ve done is structure contracts. I found that everybody loves to be cheerleaders for startups, but ultimately, startups are measured by revenue. We have structured all of our engagements with

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Catching Up On Readings: Global IPO Trends Q1 2024

This report from Ernst & Young analyzes the trends in the global IPO market for the first quarter of 2024. The Americas and EMEIA regions are looking up but the APAC region is plunging. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Very good. So, what is the genesis of the new company? RJ Talyor: Well, when we were purchased, I was playing around with the early versions of the generative text content. With my history in email marketing combined with my background as an English major [it’s really unique in the tech space], I went back

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Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra:  So how did you finance all this in the early stages? RJ Talyor: At Pattern89, we raised money from a few different sources, mostly from Friends and Family/Angels. Then we were backed by High Alpha, which is a venture studio as well as a venture capital firm. They invested in Pattern89, which allowed us

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637th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

Roundtable Recap: April 18 – Validate First, Chase Money Later

During this week’s roundtable, we had two entrepreneurs pitch pre-seed startups. WaveOn Health First, we had Adam Halpern from Albuquerque, New Mexico pitch WaveOn Health. Kuttl Next, we had Varunesh Vishwakarma from Gurgaon, India, pitch Kuttl. Both projects need extensive validation. I am not convinced about the viabilities of their business models. Both entrepreneurs were

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