Cloud Stocks: Zoom Fails to Impress Post the Pandemic

According to a recent report, the global video conferencing market is expected to grow 12.5% annually over the next few years to reach $19.73 billion by 2030. Zoom Video Communications (Nasdaq: ZM) had enjoyed a stellar run during the pandemic, but with markets opening up, the company faces a significant challenge in maintaining growth forecasts.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Damani, Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund (Part 3)

Anirudh Damani: I used to be on the road for probably 25 days a month. I’ve lived in a lot of Motel 6’s across the US. I understand the value and effort it took to standardize that experience across the board. When I was looking at the deal, I could understand what he was doing. Much of my staff was having tough experiences, especially females. We would get them a business hotel, but it would be right next to a shady area. A similar hotel in Bangalore with a similar price point would be a fantastic hotel.

Thought Leaders on Internet of Things: Ordr CEO Greg Murphy (Part 1)

IoT Security is a huge vulnerability all over the world at the moment. Greg breaks down the problem into opportunities for innovators to offer solutions.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as the company.

Greg Murphy: I’m the CEO at Ordr. We’re the leader in connected device security focusing on IoT and all connected devices in the enterprise.

Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Damani, Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Is your portfolio all India-born companies?

Anirudh Damani: Out of the 27 we’ve done from the fund, 26 are domiciled in India. One is domiciled in the US but it’s primarily an Indian business selling to the world. In terms of sales, 25% of our portfolio sales happen outside the country, but most of the companies are based in India.

Sramana Mitra: I assume the B2B SaaS strategy is global SaaS companies.

Cloud Stocks: Upstart Expands Its AI Product Reach

According to a recent report, the global digital lending platform market is estimated to grow at 15% CAGR from $8.6 billion to $20.3 billion by 2027. San Mateo-based Upstart (NASDAQ: UPST) recently announced its quarterly results as it continues to expand its AI capabilities.

Thursday, October 13 – 593rd 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 593rd FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, October 13, 2022, 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!

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped with Freemium and Free Trials to $13M

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

When we spoke in 2016, SurveyGizmo Co-founder Christian Vanek had bootstrapped the company to $13 million from Boulder, Colorado. He experimented with both freemium and free trial, and managed to monetize nicely. The company is now named Alchemer.

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?

Christian Vanek: I’m from upstate New York originally. I was born in 1977. Honestly, I moved around quite a bit. I never went to the same high school for more than a couple of years. In the end, I ended up in Massachusetts. After high school, I had no idea what to do with my life. I was not the best student ever. The beginning of my journey was probably when I decided to do a year of service for AmeriCorps as part of an urban peace corps that had started in Boston and spread around the United States. Through working in the homeless shelter there and building a software package to help manage clothing and service distribution, I got my hands dirty and started getting the bug of building software for other people.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Amit Jain, Chief Product Officer, ServiceMax (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much of this industry do you think has a solution?

Amit Jain: I’ll put it this way. Our enterprise customers also grow by acquisition. There are also inherent technical debts as well. It’s a herculean task for these companies to have a uniform technology strategy. Maybe 10 different ERP and homegrown field services.

A lot of these companies have a solution in place. Typically, the smaller ones have paper and pencil solutions and a lot of homegrown IT solutions as well. The point is how and when they’ll evolve into solutions such as ServiceMax. We think that there are enough proof points in the market from an ROI perspective for these companies to go in more aggressively now versus five to seven years ago.