Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Meltwater to $200 Million

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

Jorn Lyseggen, Founder and Executive Chairman of Meltwater, started the company in Norway and scaled organically to $200 million. His fascinating journey was shared with me in 2015.

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

Jorn Lyseggen: I was actually born in Korea. I came to Norway as a very small child. I was three years old. I actually grew up in a little farm in the middle of a deep, dark forest in Norway. You drive for hours into the deep, dark forest and then suddenly, there’s a small opening. Then, you come to a little village with 168 families. One of those families is mine.

>>>

Featured Videos

Best of Bootstrapping: Leveraged Domain Knowledge and Bootstrapped to $15M

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

Ernie Bray, Chairman and CEO of AutoClaims Direct (ACD), leveraged his domain knowledge in auto insurance claims processing, and built a robust, sustainable business. When we spoke in 2015, he was using a virtual workforce strategy to scale.

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

Ernie Bray: I was born in a small town in Central California called Porterville, California. It’s a farming community. My dad was a teacher. My mom stayed at home and took care of us. I grew up in a small town environment.

>>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Gaurav Chaturvedi, Partner at Kae Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: And what are you seeing on the BPO side? BPO is the lowest hanging fruit for AI to automate. This discussion that we just had applies very well to BPO, right? You can automate a very large part of what is being done in a human BPO mode. A lot of that can be AI enabled, but it can still continue to be in this do-it-for-me (DIFM) mode.

 So are you seeing whole BPO workflows turning to AI companies?

Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Gaurav Chaturvedi, Partner at Kae Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: That’s yet another nuance on it. That is basically developing, having AI platforms, AI technology tools, and then developing solutions for people. So that’s more of a traditional solution services companies that are now AI enabled solution services.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Gaurav Chaturvedi, Partner at Kae Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. The reason I’m asking this question Gaurav is, so as you know, AI is easier to control in a more constrained mode. The more degrees of freedom you give it, the more it is difficult to control all the issues like hallucination and precision. AI has a tendency to make things up and go a little bit haywire. I’m very curious about what is going to happen when this is actually operating in real world scenarios and how are they constraining?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Gaurav Chaturvedi, Partner at Kae Capital (Part 1)

Gaurav Chaturvedi, Partner at Kae Capital, discusses the trends he is seeing in the Indian startup ecosystem.

October 24 – 660th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 660th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, October 24, 2024, at 8 a.m. PDT / 11 a.m. EDT / 5 p.m. CEST / 8:30 p.m. India IST.

If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.

You can learn more here and REGISTER TO PITCH OR ATTEND HERE. Register and you will receive the recording by email, even if you are unable to attend. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!

659th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here: