Color: Mendocino IV

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 – Mendocino IV

Mendocino IV | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

Featured Videos

How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Five years have gone by at this point and then you do the pivot. How much money has gone in in these five years?

Ned Hill: $3 million or $4 million. It wasn’t that we weren’t doing commercial deals. I had prepped everybody that this was going to take a while. We had the ability to show people what we had created. It is mind-blowing. They had faith in me.

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

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

Continuing with our theme of Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, here is Founder William King’s story of bootstrapping Zephyr Health, a robust company in the healthcare industry. This strategy led to funding by Kleiner Perkins by the time we spoke in 2015. Zephyr Health was acquired in 2018 by Anju Software.

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?

William King: I was born in Princeton, New Jersey. I lived in Princeton until I was 18. I’m the oldest of six children. That’s a little bit unique in that we had a lot of action in the house. The age span was actually a difference of 10 years, which was pretty interesting and pretty heroic, now that I’m a parent myself. As a child, part of my experience in growing up was leading my siblings and helping them to participate. Kids look up to their older brothers and sisters. A lot of what was instilled in me at a very young age is this notion of making good choices, collaboration, and the idea that people are paying attention to the things that you’re doing.

>>>

Video FAQs

Cloud Stocks: Meta Plays with Generative AI Capabilities

Earlier last week, Meta (Nasdaq: META), formerly Facebook, announced its first quarter results that outpaced market expectations. The company continues to invest in its Metaverse initiative, but the results announcement drove the stock up 12% in the after-hours trading session.

How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging (Part 5)

Ned Hill: We’re building a platform that not only could deliver packages for residents and buildings but also send notifications to these residents. We needed to flesh it out before we released it. I took my time. I’m thankful we did. It’s the best system in the world for package management. Working on the platform is also the basis for many other applications like pick-up and drop-off. In New York, you can’t drop it unattended.

Sramana Mitra: How much money went into funding your 12 years of technology development with no revenue?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped First Using Services to Exit

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

Conversocial Co-founder Joshua March first built a digital marketing agency around social media before identifying the product opportunity for Conversocial. Here is our conversation from 2015. Verint acquired Conversocial in 2021.

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

Joshua March: I grew up in a relatively small town in England, a few hours outside of London. It’s called Malvern, Worcestershire. It’s famous for classical music composer Elgar. It has beautiful hills and countryside. It’s a lovely place to grow up but not completely exciting from a business perspective or the perspective of a 16-year-old.

>>>

How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me how you put one foot before the other. Try to tell the story of your lessons from the trenches. Did you have an investment thesis that panned out?

Ned Hill: I had a business plan.

Sramana Mitra: What were you going to do?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a High Growth Startup

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

Minnesota seems to be developing well as a hub for tech startups. With a strong culture of bootstrapping, we’re seeing a lot of entrepreneurs building high growth businesses. Here is my conversation from 2015 with Praful Saklani, Founder and CEO of Pramata.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your personal journey. Tell me a bit about where you were born and raised and in what kind of circumstances.

Praful Saklani: I was actually born in the United Kingdom. My family is from North India. When I was four years old, we moved from the UK to Minneapolis. Throughout that whole process of growing up in Minnesota, I also traveled back to India, at least, once every two years. We’d spend a lot of time with my family there. I would say that I actually grew up both in the US and India. Even when I visit India, I would actually spend time in villages and up in the mountain. It’s a nice broad perspective of a good mid-western upbringing and a good north Indian upbringing too. That’s a bit of a cultural context.

>>>