Sramana Mitra: Double-click down on where you were — what use case you were applying this knowledge processing unit workflow to?
David Villalon: In the early days, that was one of the biggest questions we had to solve.
Sramana Mitra: For your startup, that’s always the biggest question you have to solve.
>>>
I want to share with you an observation from running the 1Mby1M program since 2008. Almost 700 free mentoring roundtables with over 300k entrepreneurs. Thousands of case studies of successful entrepreneurs – the who’s who of tech startups – through interview based methodology development. Thousands and thousands of premium member coaching sessions.
Some entrepreneurs are over-anxious about confidentiality.

Yesterday, Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) reported its third quarter results that missed market earnings expectations. The company continues to expand its monetization capabilities through advertising and franchise business while leveraging AI and ML tools to deliver improved content.
>>>
David discusses his journey building an enterprise AI venture with 15 large enterprise customers who are implementing real use cases built on the Maisa platform. These use cases are not POC experiments. They are in production. The customer base currently is mostly European enterprises. This is going to be a very valuable company.
>>>
I want to share with you an observation from running the 1Mby1M program since 2008. Almost 700 free mentoring roundtables with over 300k entrepreneurs. Thousands of case studies of successful entrepreneurs – the who’s who of tech startups – through interview based methodology development. Thousands and thousands of premium member coaching sessions.
A lot of entrepreneurs are looking for silver bullets.
They are not necessarily interested in doing the hard work needed to build a sustainable business.
Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint.
We don’t have silver bullets. No one does.

SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman shared his wonderful bootstrapping story with me in 2017.
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?
Jared Shusterman: I was born in Miami, Florida. I’m one of the few South Florida natives. I grew up in a middle class family that had a very heavy focus on education. After I graduated high school, I went to the University of Virginia. I got a Bachelors degree with a concentration in Finance and Marketing. Shortly after that, I moved out to San Francisco and worked for an investment bank in the online media practice. That’s the quick summary of my initial upbringing.

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 – Hidden Impressions II
Hidden Impressions II | Sramana Mitra, 2023 | Watercolor, Ink, Pastel | 9 x 12, On Paper
Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. Was there an inflection point that you experienced as you built the business?
Jon Carson: I think I’m in it right now.
Sramana Mitra: You are in it right now? Tell me more.
>>>