Building a PropTech Venture with a Virtual Team: Discount Lots President Paul Hersko (Part 1)

Paul and his co-founder have built a capital-efficient PropTech venture using primarily a virtual team. It’s an interesting niche that is largely underserved.

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?

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Catching Up On Readings: E-Commerce Tech Market Map

This report from CB Insights provides the market landscape of e-commerce tech companies helping brands and retailers run the back-end, front-end, and merchandising side of an online business more profitably. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Colors: Orient Express III

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 – Orient Express III

Orient Express III | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

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Colors: Orient Express II

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 – Orient Express II

Orient Express II | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

From Developer to Cyber Security Entrepreneur with $10M Revenue and $18M Funding: LoginRadius CEO Deepak Gupta (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What about team? You and your co-founder brought it to almost one million ARR an a bit of seed funding. How did you build the team from there on?

Deepak Gupta: Team was one big challenge for us. We had never done teambuilding exercises before. That was something new. We got some initial people who were excited for the product. We had to talk to them and explain the vision. We got a few good team members in the beginning. They are still with us.

February 16 – 599th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 599th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, February 16, 2023, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 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 a $7M Company in Houston

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

My conversation from 2014 with Gaurav Khandelwal, CEO of ChaiOne, became an interesting strategy discussion about a company doing substantial revenue based on services, had productized a piece of its services business that was also generating over a million in revenue.

Sramana: Gaurav, let’s go to the beginning of your story. Where were you born? What kind of background were you raised in?

Gaurav Khandelwal: I was born in Kolkata, India. I came to the US for my undergrad. I grew up in a large city and I really wanted to experience something different, so I applied and went to school in a very small town in northern Indiana that was in an Amish community called Goshen College. Different universities come through India and interview students and applicants. That gives students a chance to meet with deans and hear about the schools. I met with several of them and this particular school was very interesting. They had a program that required every single student to spend a semester abroad to graduate. I had never heard of that before. I thought it was fantastic to know that every single student at that school had spent a semester in Indonesia, China, or some other country.

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Cloud Stocks: Amazon Focused on Expanding Fulfillment with Buy with Prime

Earlier last week, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced its fourth-quarter results that surpassed market expectations. With Amazon’s recently launched product upgrades and services, growth in revenue and earnings is expected to continue.