Catching Up On Readings: AI PC and Smartphone Market

This report from Gartner forecasts that worldwide shipments of AI PCs and GenAI smartphones will grow 11% to 295 million units by the end of 2024. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Featured Videos

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $20M+ and an Exit

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

We’re big fans of bootstrapping to exit case studies. Imagine Easy Solutions’ Co-founder and Co-CEO Neal Taparia shares his wonderful journey. They scaled the business to over $20 million in revenue without investment and sold to Chegg in 2016.

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?

Neal Taparia: I was born in the suburbs of Chicago. My parents were immigrants from India. I’m first-generation in the United States. I did my undergraduate education in Chicago. After that, I settled down in New York where I’ve been ever since. 

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Best of Bootstrapping: From Laid-Off Engineer to Startup Co-founder and Exit

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

Aspera Co-founder Michelle Munson started the company she began after being laid off. Aspera was her realization that she could not only control her own career path, but also create jobs for other people in a culture she established. I hope this conversation from 2009 inspires everyone who has been let go by their employers. Aspera was acquired by IBM in 2014.

SM: Michelle, where does your story begin?

MM: I grew up in Kansas, on a farm. My family is a five-generation farm family that raises Angus cattle as well as wheat, corn and soybeans. There is a long-standing family tradition in both the line of business and the location. My mom is a retired university professor. I grew up in Kansas, went to school there and went to college at Kansas State University. That is an interesting point with me; I was accepted to MIT and went to Kansas State.

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Video FAQs

Building a Capital Efficient Second Venture: LiftLab CEO John Wallace (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: It’s interesting. Now, where to from here? You said that 2023 was great. You’ve been doubling every year. It’s almost venture scale growth without raising huge amounts of money, which is all fabulous. What are you trying to accomplish and how do you want to play this?

John Wallace: Next, it must be, first and foremost, more of the same. We don’t have to let go of the horse that got us here.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped from College to $8M

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

Waveform CEO Sina Khanifar started tinkering with bootstrapped entrepreneurship way back in college. When we spoke in 2020, this had certainly paid off.

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?

Sina Khanifar: I was born in Iran. We moved to the UK when I was one. My parents did their PhDs in the UK. After they returned to Iran, the war broke out. They thought the best choice would be to go back to the UK. They ended up not returning.

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Building a Capital Efficient Second Venture: LiftLab CEO John Wallace (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So, a fraction of their media spend is your business model. What kind of deal sizes are we talking and, and what do you need to sell? In the pandemic, I heard from a lot of people that they were able to close deals without having to meet people. Even very large deals. They were closing without having to meet people. So what was the model of actually selling these engagements?

John Wallace: Yes. The media plans that run through LiftLab are almost an order of magnitude from small to big. So, the prices just adjust to that.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Subscription Service to Significant Scale

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

Before the pandemic in 2018, ButcherBox Founder and CEO Mike Salguero shared a fascinating story of a subscription service for high-quality meat being delivered to consumer homes.

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

Mike Salguero: I was born in Paraguay. I’m the youngest of four kids. My parents divorced when I was six months old, and my mom moved up to western Massachusetts with her four children.

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Building a Capital Efficient Second Venture: LiftLab CEO John Wallace (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to build out all the specs that you were getting from these customers?

John Wallace: We were experimenting only for about a year and a half. Then we spent probably another nine months building the modelling platform.