Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped from College to $8M

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

Waveform CEO Sina Khanifar started tinkering with bootstrapped entrepreneurship way back in college. When we spoke in 2020, this had certainly paid off.

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?

Sina Khanifar: I was born in Iran. We moved to the UK when I was one. My parents did their PhDs in the UK. After they returned to Iran, the war broke out. They thought the best choice would be to go back to the UK. They ended up not returning.

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Cloud Stocks: Analysis of Google’s AI Platform Strategy

Last week, Alphabet aka Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) reported its fourth quarter results. It surpassed revenue and earnings estimates driven by its GenAI offerings and accelerated growth in Google Cloud. However, it missed estimates for advertising revenue.

Building a Capital Efficient Second Venture: LiftLab CEO John Wallace (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So, a fraction of their media spend is your business model. What kind of deal sizes are we talking and, and what do you need to sell? In the pandemic, I heard from a lot of people that they were able to close deals without having to meet people. Even very large deals. They were closing without having to meet people. So what was the model of actually selling these engagements?

John Wallace: Yes. The media plans that run through LiftLab are almost an order of magnitude from small to big. So, the prices just adjust to that.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Subscription Service to Significant Scale

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

Before the pandemic in 2018, ButcherBox Founder and CEO Mike Salguero shared a fascinating story of a subscription service for high-quality meat being delivered to consumer homes.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Mike Salguero: I was born in Paraguay. I’m the youngest of four kids. My parents divorced when I was six months old, and my mom moved up to western Massachusetts with her four children.

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Building a Capital Efficient Second Venture: LiftLab CEO John Wallace (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to build out all the specs that you were getting from these customers?

John Wallace: We were experimenting only for about a year and a half. Then we spent probably another nine months building the modelling platform.

Catching Up On Readings: State of AI 2023

This report from CBInsights focuses on the funding trends in the AI sector. In 2023, AI startups raised $42.5B across 2,500 equity rounds. Generative AI dominated in 2023, attracting 48% of all AI funding. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Colors: La Nuit I

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 Nuit I

La Nuit I | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Ink | 9  x 12, On Paper

Building a Capital Efficient Second Venture: LiftLab CEO John Wallace (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: So, what you’re saying is that you got this input about what the market was looking for, and because they were paying customers on the first piece of the functionality, you were able to get them to give you access to data. Because in all of this, as you know, in building AI products, access to data is one of the big gating items so that you can develop anything without problems.

John Wallace: Yes. We cannot build these products in a laboratory. We need to do it in the trenches with customer data.