Colors: Thunderstorm III

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 – Thunderstorm III

Thunderstorm III | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

Featured Videos

Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: RavenPack CEO Armando Gonzales (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: At this point, you had a customer. You understand your TAM. You are starting to execute. It’s an easier funding situation.

Armando Gonzales: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise?

Armando Gonzales: $3 million.

Sramana Mitra: 2008?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services to $10M

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

When we spoke in 2015, CEO Carl Mazzanti has bootstrapped eMazzanti Technologies using services to close to $10 million, maintaining a 20% year-over-year growth rate.

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

Carl Mazzanti: I was born in Pennsylvania. I come from a military family. A joke that I used as a kid was, “My parents moved around a lot, but I always found them.” Because of that, me and my brother are more outgoing than the rest.

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Video FAQs

Cloud Stocks: Nutanix Reimagines Data Centric Platform Services

Enterprise cloud computing player Nutanix (Nasdaq: NTNX) recently announced its third quarter results. The market was pleased with Nutanix’s quarterly performance and outlook. Post the results announcement, it’s stock soared 14% in the after-hours trading session.

Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: RavenPack CEO Armando Gonzales (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What were average deal sizes in what you were selling?

Armando Gonzales: It’s a range. It can be anywhere between the $50,000 to several hundreds of thousand dollars.

Sramana Mitra: Recurring revenue?

Armando Gonzales: Correct.

Best of Bootstrapping: Serial Entrepreneur Bootstraps First

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

Joe Speiser, Founder and CEO of LittleThings bootstrapped his first digital media/ad network business to $50 million in revenue and then sold it to private equity. Later he started a second business, an e-commerce company, that he bootstrapped for a year and then raised venture capital. His third business, LittleThings, is a spin-off within the second business that took him back to his digital media roots. Since our conversation in 2015, LittleThings was acquired by RockYou Media, an entertainment and media company aimed at millennials, in 2018.

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?

Joe Speiser: I’m from New York and I went to school in the city. I studied at the Columbia University. I’ve been doing all sorts of businesses from a very young age. I always had a passion for trying to start something from scratch and make a living. My dad is an entrepreneur. I used to work in his warehouse for most of my summers. It definitely taught me a lot watching my dad run a business. I don’t know if it’s something that’s taught or something that you’re just genetically predisposed to. I enjoy it so much.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped First, Raised Money Later to Exit

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

Ensighten Founder Josh Manion is a fellow MIT alum, and a fellow believer in the tried and true methodology, Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later. Josh raised his Series A with $5 million in revenue. When we spoke in 2015, the company was growing at 150% year-over-year. CHEQ acquired Ensighten in 2022. Wonderful story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your story. Where are you from?

Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Josh Manion: I grew up in a little town in Wisconsin called Jamesville, which had about 50,000 people. My dad delivered little snack cakes to grocery stores and stocked the shelves with them. My mom ran a store. It was a Midwest upbringing. The unique element for me was that I was actually homeschooled all the way through high school. That afforded me some unique latitude to pursue some of the things that I’m passionate about. One of which is chess, which I took to some extreme. I actually played as a professional chess player for a couple of years before going to college. I have one sister three years older than me.

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Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: RavenPack CEO Armando Gonzales (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to your story. How did you build the company?

Armando Gonzales: In the early days, we were mostly doing research and development and trying to figure out how some of our ideas could apply to different problems.

Sramana Mitra: When you got this client who wanted to use your trading technology, did you start zeroing in on that particular use case as the company positioning?