Colors: La Maison dans les Bois II

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 I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – La Maison dans les Bois II

La Maison dans les Bois II | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Ink | 8  x 8, On Paper

Featured Videos

Best of Bootstrapping: What Should Tech Startups Do to Raise Seed Capital in 2024?

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.

In general, Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later is still the best strategy. You need to be ready to raise money.

If you decide to raise money, I strongly suggest you read the Seed Capital series of interviews on our blog ASAP. We’ve profiled investor after investor to understand their investment thesis. You need to get in their heads and get a sense of what they’re looking for, especially if you’ve never raised money before.

Remember, Investors are looking to multiply the money that they put into startups.

A bit more sophisticated way to think about it is to ask the question: Multiply by how much? 2X? 3X? 5X? 10X? 20X?

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped with Services from Sweden

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

European entrepreneurs often bootstrap using services successfully. The chasing of investors from the get go is less prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic, although this obsession from Silicon Valley has traveled to all corners of the world now. Dapresy Founder Tobi Andersson and CEO Rudy Nadilo shared their journey in 2016, when they had crossed $7 million in annual revenue with minimal outside financing. Forsta acquired Dapresy in 2021.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. It sounds like, Tobi, you’re the founder. Maybe, we’ll start with you and let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Tobi Andersson: I was born in Sweden, in the Swedish countryside. Very early on in my life, I decided that one day I would like to earn the money to have the opportunity to buy a really big farm. That has always been my vision – to create something that, on one hand, can give me money but on the other hand, I can create opportunities for people to develop. I’m very much like HR focused on life. I would like everyone an opportunity to feel that they have a good life.

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Video FAQs

New Pricing for Tech Startups Course and Coupons

This month we are introducing a new course Pricing for Tech Startups by Sramana Mitra [Coupon Code: TRY1MBY1MMAR2024PRI]. There’s a common misconception that offering everything for free and then figuring out monetization later is a viable strategy. However, we firmly believe in assigning value to your products and services from the outset. Pricing is both important and complex, requiring careful analysis and strategic decision-making. This course shares proven methodologies and best practices honed over years of experience.

We have packaged our time-tested 1Mby1M methodology for building technology startups into many short courses on Udemy as part of our aim to democratize entrepreneurship education at scale globally.

For the month of March we are offering you up to 85% off the following courses as well.

All of these coupons will expire on March 31, 2024, so enroll today!

Bootstrapping:

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later with Sramana Mitra: TRY1MBY1MMAR2024BTS

Bootstrapping a Startup with a Paycheck with Sramana Mitra: TRY1MBY1MMAR2024PAY

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Content Marketing Company First

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Diego Gomes, CEO Co-founder of Rock Content, had built a terrific content marketing company from Brazil when we spoke in 2020. He bootstrapped first, raised money later, and had then acquired a sizable US company to scale. Excellent story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Tell me about your background. Where are you from? Where were you raised?

Diego Gomes: I am from Brazil. I lived most of my life in Belo Horizonte. I started our company Rock Content around seven years ago with two co-founders, Edmar Ferreira and Vitor Pecanha.

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Cloud Stocks: DocuSign is Looking for a Buyer

Digital signature services provider DocuSign (Nasdaq: DOCU) recently announced very strong quarterly results. The company continues to add to its product offerings while it scouts for a potential buyer for itself.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Fast Growth Company with Services

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Gurman Hundal, Co-founder of MiQ, had bootstrapped a fast growth company using services when we spoke in 2016. Read about his impressive journey.

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?

Gurman Hundal: I was born in England in a town about 30 miles from London. My family is from the northern state of Punjab in India. Even though I was born in England, I couldn’t speak English till I was about six years old. I have a British-Indian upbringing. My parents owned their own shoe shop in a shopping mall near where we live. I got an early exposure to family-run organizations. I went through the educational system within England. I went to University of Kingston where I studied Business. It was there where I started my career.

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Catching Up On Readings: US IPOs Q1’24

This feature from Renaissance Capital looks at upcoming IPOs in the week ahead that signals the end of the first quarter of 2024. Q1 is about to end with some of the first large tech IPOs including Reddit and Astera Labs. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.