Over the course of two years, we have released over 70 courses on Udemy with the aim to democratize entrepreneurship education at scale globally. This series of posts aims to help you find the one you need easily and provide you with discount coupons.
>>>In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
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 – October 1
October 1 | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Brush Pen | 8 x 8, On Paper
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
When you run a business over a long period of time, technology changes create massive challenges. When we spoke in 2016, CEO David Braun had navigated TemplateMonster through several of these. In 2019, David became a Member of Parliament in the Ukraine.
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 circumstances?
David Braun: I’m from Georgia – the former USSR country. I’ve lived there until I turned 11. In 1992, Russia initiated the war in Georgia. We were a very wealthy family. We had to drop everything we had – house, apartments, cars, and so on. We just moved in one day with just the clothes we were wearing. I still have my shorts in which I had to run away. That’s all we had to start.
During this week’s roundtable, we had two discussions with startups in the early stages.
InfiNET
First up, we had Ean Mikale from Colorado Springs, Colorado, pitch InfiNET, a Quantum hosting service. My guidance was to adjust the positioning.
Anaitik
Next, we had Hritik Sharma from Chandigarh, India, pitch Anaitik, a fast turnaround custom T-shirt e-commerce venture. My guidance was to try the marketing ideas he discussed, but if they fail, pivot quickly. Fail fast, in other words.
You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
According to a Gartner report, by 2025, 70% of all B2B seller-buyer interactions will be recorded or analyzed to extract competitive, deal, and market insights using AI/ML and natural language processing (NLP). By 2025, 75% of B2B sales organizations are expected to replace traditional sales playbooks with AI-based guided selling solutions. Sales force automation platforms such as People.ai are helping drive these sales teams by building and leveraging AI/ML and NLP technologies.
>>>If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Dara Greaney bootstrapped BuyAutoParts to $54 million in profitable revenue and sold the company to private equity. Yet another story of success in the niche e-commerce domain.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Dara Greaney: I was born and raised in Ventura, California. I was the first one in my family to be born in the US. My family is all Irish. My grandfather got a visa and came to New York. My father immigrated in ’78 and I was born that year. I’m a first-generation American. I went to school in Ventura. I enjoyed beach, surfing, and soccer. I was always fascinated by technology and marketing. I went to University of San Diego for undergraduate studies. I got a degree in Marketing and Finance there. Then I went to San Diego State’s entrepreneurship school and graduated there in 2002. At that time, I did a startup with an e-commerce company that quickly got bought by a bigger company, but I didn’t want to move to Chicago.
Today’s 611th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, July 13, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. MEETING NUMBER: 2552 149 0830 PASSWORD: startup All are welcome!