Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: SurgePays CEO Brian Cox (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me probe something very specific. When you made the switch by digitizing that whole process of scratchable prepaid cards but were still catering to this low-end consumer base, what was the go-to-market strategy? How do these consumers reach you and find you?

Brian Cox: That’s a great question. I failed every which way possible in trying to go direct to the consumer. The only way to truly reach the consumer from my perspective was to go into the neighborhoods they live in. There is a false sense to this influencer thing. Our market is not enamored by Silicon Valley influencers, if you will.

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: CleanConnect CEO David Conley (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What’s interesting to me and created a bit of cognitive dissonance is when you think of gas, I would assume that you’re checking for smells.

David Conley: The OGI camera has been around for 15 years. It’s a cold core mid-wave camera. It’s filtered to 3.3 microns. It uses a notch filter to see the energy between the backgrounds of the pixels and the camera. You see the pixels and then you’ll see the energy between them. If you filter to 3.3 microns, you’re seeing gas. Every VOC will fall into that with a couple of exceptions. You’re seeing at least 24 VOCs simultaneously in one view. That camera already existed.

Best of Bootstrapping: Happily Bootstrapping with Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu

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

Zoho has been a tremendous success story in the cloud and I’ve known Zoho CEO and founder Sridhar Vembu for many years. Here is my conversation from 2007, when Zoho was a new on-demand office suite. Sridhar shares his rather unorthodox but brilliantly successful entrepreneurial journey.

Also read my follow-up interview from 2016, where Sridhar discusses his strategy for Zoho’s next phase of growth, and his general observations about the dysfunctions in the cloud ecosystem.

Sramana: I would like to start this interview by tracing your background.

Sridhar: I was born in India, I went to Madras IIT for my undergraduate and came to Princeton to do my PhD in 1989. In 1994 I joined Qualcomm in San Diego. My PhD is in electrical engineering, so I really do not have a software background. I worked on wireless communication which was my area of interest at the time. I worked with Qualcomm for two years. I worked on CDMA, power control and some very detailed issues on wireless communications. That is how I got started in the tech industry.

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Cloud Stocks: RingCentral Focuses on Hardware Integration

According to a recent report, the global unified communication as a service market is estimated to grow more than 23% annually through 2028. Earlier last month, RingCentral (NYSE:RNG) announced its second quarter results that continued to surpass market expectations. The company is focusing on AI capabilities and improving integration with hardware vendors to expand its market share.

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: SurgePays CEO Brian Cox (Part 1)

Brian elucidates a world of underbanked, underserved consumers that we don’t hear much about – many lessons for global entrepreneurs interested in unleashing fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

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

Brian Cox: I’m the CEO of SurgePays. I’ve been a business builder for 20 years. My main focus has been building companies that service the underbanked. Most of my companies have dealt with recurring revenues through telecommunication or financial services. That has been where I found my niche.

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: CleanConnect CEO David Conley (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Technologists are very good at finding solutions and looking for problems.

David Conley: I see that a lot. To find a problem, solve it, and find a customer who’ll pay for it. That’s what we did. Luke was a part of Energy Strong, which is a media company for energy. They had just put a campaign together for another law called Proposition 112, which was regulating oil & gas in the state of Colorado. The state passed it. Engineers started talking about how they’re going to solve this problem. They come into our offices.

ZScaler Focuses on AI Capabilities for Market Growth

Global secure access service edge (SASE) market is projected to grow 26% annually to $4.1 billion by 2026 from $1.2 billion in 2021. Cloud security provider Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) recently reported its second quarter results that outpaced market expectations.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Wiredrive Using Services to $10M

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

When we spoke in 2016, Co-founder Taylor Tyng had bootstrapped Wiredrive over a 17-year period to about $10 million. At that time, he had options to grow organically or raise money. Either way, an interesting journey.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Taylor Tyng: I was born south of Boston, Massachusetts in a town called Duxbury. I was born the son of two entrepreneurs who went through a line of businesses from early plastic mold injection technology companies and ended up working in a luxury travel business. I got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug early. I was raised in a middle class setting and my parents made sure that they raised children who were thoughtful and mindful. I had a real good platform to practice at an early age. By trade, I’m a designer. Art and commerce has always been a big part of my life.

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