Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to Over $10M from the UK

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

Cambridge, England is a great place for high-end technical talent. This story from 2017 traces the journey of a group of such talented people with core expertise in Natural Language Processing, including Linguamatics Co-founder Roger Hale, and how they turned their expertise into a robust, profitable business. IQVIA acquired Linguamatics in January 2019.

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?

Roger Hale: I think I had quite a normal upbringing. I grew up in Yorkshire in the northeast of England. My mother came from a family with a local manufacturing business. She also ran a restaurant for a while. My father was an academic. He was a mathematician. He had actually been a code breaker and worked with some of the very first computers as part of that. I didn’t obviously know that until later.

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Catching Up On Readings: The Future of Big Tech

This feature from CB Insights illustrates the future of Big Tech with the help of ten charts. Big tech companies — Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia — are set to earn over $1.65T in aggregate revenue in 2023 and have raked in over $200B in profits. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

626th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

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December 14 – 627th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 627th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, December 14, 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!

Roundtable Recap: December 7 – An Indian EdTech Startup Discussion

During this week’s roundtable, we had Muhammed from Kerala, India pitch an EdTech startup. I liked the market entry strategy. The broader GTM needs work.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Man and Superman: India’s Prospects in the Age of AI (Part 10)

As we see over and again in history, everything is driven by the Story. The Narrative.

The key narratives, even today, are often controlled by Religion. 

Thursday, December 7 – 626th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 626th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, December 7, 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 to Over $100M

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

Online mattress is one of the hottest e-commerce category these days, and here is yet another one delivering venture-scale growth without venture capital. Tuft & Needle Co-founder JT Marino shared his story with me in 2017.

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?

JT Marino: I was born in Phoenix, but I grew up in Pennsylvania. I went to Penn State. That’s where I met my co-founder, Daehee Park. From there, my career took me to Silicon Valley working for several startups. That’s where my co-founder and I stuck together. We were at a company at Palo Alto and we decided that we wanted to build something of our own. Based on our previous experience with startups, we wanted to do it a different way.

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