Catching Up On Readings: State of LLM Developers

This research report from CB Insights explores the key trends in the large language model (LLM) developer landscape including top developers, funding, unicorns, and active investors. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

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July 20 – Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development Roundtable

During this special program, we will be Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development Strategy. If you would like to share your thoughts for a few minutes during this program, please Register Here. We will share ideas and hope to accommodate a variety of perspectives. Be sure to read my series of blogs beforehand: Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: A Strategy Discussion. All registrants will receive a link to the recording afterwards. There will be no entrepreneur pitches during this program.

Photo by ABHISHEK CHAKRABORTY on Unsplash

Colors: October 2

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 2

October 2 | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

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1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Bootstrapping

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.

611th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

Colors: October 1

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

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Through Massive Challenges to $15M

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.

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Roundtable Recap: July 13 – Fail Fast, Try Again

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:

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