The Startup Velocity Question: Is it the Product?

Product and Technology are not the same. 

While technology failures are difficult to recover from, product issues can be addressed.

Often, once a startup starts to engage with the market, it develops a more sophisticated understanding of the market’s needs. Features, functions, integrations, APIs – a lot of input comes into the company through customer immersion.

Featured Videos

The Startup Velocity Question: Is it Technology?

At the heart of most tech companies is, of course, technology. Today, the market is particularly frothy around Artificial Intelligence. AI is a technology that is notorious for not working as envisioned.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Pura Vida to $130M

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

When we spoke in 2020, Pura Vida CEO Co-founder Griffin Thall and his partner had turned an investment of $200 into a $130 million company. Amazing execution!

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

Griffin Thall: I grew up in LA. I went to school at San Diego State. After graduating from college in 2010, my business partner and I went on a trip to Costa Rica. We were there for five weeks to travel, surf, and explore.

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Video FAQs

Long Bootstrapped Journey into Cutting-Edge Generative AI: Jeff Kuo, Founder of Ragic (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Yes, it is tough. I have a slightly different kind of question as my last set of questions for you. No code, right now is a very attractive terminology in the industry, and part of it is coming from the fact that AI is automating everything, including coding. So no-code, AI-generated software is the future that we are going towards. What are your thoughts about this evolution? How is that impacting your business? How does that impact your product roadmap etc.?

Long Bootstrapped Journey into Cutting-Edge Generative AI: Jeff Kuo, Founder of Ragic (Part 6)

So I wanna double click down on both of those marketing and go-to-market strategies: Google AdWords and Facebook advertising. So let’s do Google AdWords. Are you trying to do lead generation on no-code platforms?

Jeff Kuo: No-code platform is only a tiny portion of our keyword targeting. We target a lot of different types of application keywords. We try to target a lot of keywords so that we can target these long tail smaller needs, which cost less to acquire clicks.

Sramana Mitra: You do long tail within what theme? Is it still within the theme of no-code platforms?

April 18 – 637th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 637th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, April 18, 2024, 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!

636th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

Roundtable Recap: April 11 – Segmentation Error is Fatal

During this week’s roundtable, we discussed positioning in the context of a Mexican company.

SellNow

We had Francisco Avelar from Mexico City, Mexico, pitch SellNow. The entire discussion was about positioning his service to the right target customer. It’s a great case study to learn how to peel the onion and get to a focused segment.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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