Catching Up On Readings: Top Tech Trends 2023

This feature from CB Insights identifies the top tech trends poised to reshape industries in 2023. These include super apps, immortality as a service, and consumer robots. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

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Colors: Skye IX

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 – Skye IX

Skye IX | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 8  x 8, On Paper

598th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

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Roundtable Recap: January 19 – The Future of Social Media

During this week’s roundtable, we had a wonderful set of discussions on the Future of Social Media.

Black Med-Connect (B-MED)

We first had Dr. Jasmine Weiss from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, pitch the B-MED / Black-Med-Connect mobile app for the Black medical community, a specialized social / professional network idea.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Fun.com

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

Tom Fallenstein, CEO of Fun.com, has built a kick-a$$ e-commerce company out of rural Minnesota. Here is our conversation from 2015.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised, in what kind of environment?

Tom Fallenstein: I was born in Minnesota in a small town about an hour and a half south of Minneapolis. I’ve lived here all my life. I grew up just outside of the city. I went to school in Mankato for Computer Science and Graphic Design. Our mom was a seamstress. We loved Halloween. We always had the best costumes when we were little. When we got older, all of our friends wanted to borrow those costumes, so my sister decided to rent them out. That’s how the business started.Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking when you were starting this business with your sister?

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Cloud Stocks: BlackLine Expands Product Line-up with AI and AR tools

According to a recent report, the global accounting software market is expected to grow at 8% CAGR to reach $38.08 billion by 2030. BlackLine (NASDAQ: BL) is targeting to grow in this market through several product upgrades that leverage its AI capabilities.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Infima Founder and Chief Scientist Kay Giesecke (Part 5)

Kay Giesecke: Then, there are the individual loans and credits. The individual mortgage loans are not traded. It’s the same problem at the individual loan level. What can we say about this borrower? These are different verticals that we can expand into.

One interesting initiative that we’re focusing on is trying to understand the impact of climate on these markets. If you have a flood in Kentucky, then there’s an impact on the homes. That’s very unfortunate.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Cleverbridge from Germany

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

We’re always impressed by entrepreneurs who manage to build sizeable companies without outside capital. Read how Founder Christian Blume maneuvered Cleverbridge to $40 million in revenue and did not want to deal with venture capital and private equity when we spoke in 2015. Cleverbridge was acquired by private equity firm EMH Partners in 2021. You can listen to our podcast interview here.

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

Christian Blume: I was born in Cologne, Germany. I moved over to the US when I was seven years old. I stayed for two years in Detroit. Then, I moved back to Germany again for a couple of years. When I was 15, I moved to London and did my International Baccalaureate over there. Then I moved back to Germany again and did my apprenticeship as a car mechanic. I then went to study Economics and went to an asset management company based out of Frankfurt, which was addressing high net worth individuals who needed investment opportunities. I was part of an advisory team there before I was tasked by my General Manager to move to the Internet in 1998. That was when everything got really important. Everybody tried to attach a .com to the ending of their company name and that made them an Internet company. I was asked to actually start a subsidiary focused on individuals who were looking at running their portfolio online and administrating it. This was when I actually got in touch with e-commerce with a company called Element Five, which was acquired in 2004 by Digital River out of the US. That gave us the opportunity to start Cleverbridge at that time.

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