Catching Up On Readings: Startups Failure Post-Mortem

This feature from CBInsights provides a compilation of the analysis of 463 startup failures since 2014. Funding, the lifeblood of startups, has dropped 34% from 2021 to 2022. Halfway through 2023, funding only sat at $130.2B, less than a third of 2022’s year-end total. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Featured Videos

Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you make this way – from advertising?

Ankush Sabharwal: It’s more money than we would have made through subscription.

Sramana Mitra: Really?

Ankush Sabharwal: There are four million users on the website and more in the app every day.

Sramana Mitra: Traffic volume was very large. You just created a way to monetize that traffic for both of you.

Colors: Les Couleurs Italienne 5

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 – Les Couleurs Italienne 5

Les Couleurs Italienne 5 | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 8  x 8, On Paper

Video FAQs

Roundtable Recap: August 31 – Many Common Mistakes CAN Be Avoided with Good Strategy

During this week’s roundtable, we discussed a lot of issues around Positioning, Unit Economics, Business Models and TAM.

Designs Crunch

First up, we had Ali Rehman Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan, pitching Designs Crunch, a design service.

Skori

Then Charles Davey from England pitched Skori, an EdTech concept.

Laika

Next, Charlene Putney from Copenhagen, Denmark, pitch Laika, a Generative AI writing assistant for fiction writers.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You were working at Ultisource when you negotiated with Indian Railways?

Ankush Sabharwal: Yes. In the appraisal cycle when I was about to quit the company, I got the highest rating. I was Group Manager that time. When you’re the manager’s manager, you hardly get the highest rating in appraisals.

September Udemy Coupons for Tech Startup Courses

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

We are offering you up to 85% off of the following Udemy courses this month, spotlighting our most informative and inspirational case studies of noteworthy technology startups.

These coupons will expire on September 30, 2023, so be sure to enroll today!

Bootstrapping:

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later with Sramana Mitra: TRY1MBY1MSEP2023BTS

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SoftBank Plans on Taking Arm Public

The IPO season appears to be gaining momentum. Recently, semiconductor provider Arm filed its F1 as it prepares to go public next month.

Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Going back to 2016, there were these platform providers but there were also these other startups that had full applications. Where was the gap? What is the justification of starting CoRover at that point?

Ankush Sabharwal: There were two sets of companies. One was the platform companies and the other is the implementation companies.