Best of Bootstrapping: Solopreneur Bootstrapped a Niche E-commerce Venture to $12M

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

It is very difficult to find gaps in e-commerce these days. Sawyer Twain Founder Chris Turner found one and executed the hell out of it.

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?

Chris Turner: I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. I graduated from Arizona State University back in 2004.

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Featured Videos

Digital Nomad Building a $5M+ E-Commerce Business: IntelligentLabs CEO Rus Hughes (Part 1)

Rus lives the life of a digital nomad. He started life as a techie, and with a very small team and a cofounder, has built a $5M+ niche e-commerce business selling supplements. Excellent story full of lessons and nuances.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Tell me about where you grew up. What is the beginning of the story?

Cloud Stocks: MongoDB Expands its Cloud IaaS Capabilities

The global database-as-a-service market is expected to grow at 15.7% CAGR from $13.5 billion in 2022 to $43.1 billion by 2030. MongoDB (Nasdaq: MDB), a leading player in the market, is looking to address this growing market by expanding its tie-ups with various cloud players.

Video FAQs

Entrepreneurship in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

There are over six million students enrolled in Machine Learning courses on Udemy. The most daring will try to start their own businesses.

For these learners, we continue to introduce Udemy courses based on the 1Mby1M methodology that will assist budding entrepreneurs in creating a pragmatic strategy.

I believe, strongly, that entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial capitalism can be democratized, and wealth can be created in the middle of the pyramid using capitalistic principles. In the next 2-3 decades, the potential for distributed capitalism is very high and the outcome should be extremely positive around the world. That is the mission upon which my current work with One Million by One Million is based.

Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Machine Learning are going to be at the forefront of this immense burst of energy.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $3M a Month

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

Prequel Co-founder CEO Timur Khabirov has bootstrapped a digital app to $3M a month. Read on to learn how.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Timur Khabirov: I was born in Uzbekistan during the Soviet Union era. When I was 15, me, my mom, and my father-in-law moved to Russia. I lived there for 10 years. I started as an entrepreneur there but not in IT. I got my education there. Then I moved to the United States in California. When the financial crisis started, I moved to New York. Now I’m in New York.

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Thursday, April 13 – 604th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 604th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, April 13, 2023, 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!

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a FinTech Startup by Piggybacking with Services

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

Quavo Co-founder David Chmielewski transitioned from a developer to an entrepreneur by leveraging his solid domain knowledge in a particular area of FinTech: dispute resolution for credit card transactions. He and his co-founders effectively used bootstrapping using services and piggybacked on the Pega Systems platform. Read on to learn more about his journey.

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?

David Chmielewski: I was born in Michigan in a small tourism-driven town. They have good schools but generally not a tremendous amount of job opportunities if you wanted to do something in technology. I was one of the lucky people who always knew what I wanted to do. I was exposed to computers pretty early.

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Catching Up On Readings: Retail Tech 100

This report from CB Insights unveiled the winners of the third annual Retail Tech 100 — a list of the 100 most promising private retail tech companies across the globe. This year’s winners are using technology to help retailers create more connected and personalized experiences and drive efficiency and profitability. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.