Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $5M from Scratch

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

The Innovation Management software space is quite crowded. When I spoke to Co-founder Robert Hoehn in 2016, IdeaScale had managed to carve out a niche. Read on!

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

Robert Hoehn: I am from Northern New York, almost bordering Canada. I actually did Computer Science in high school. I was a pretty lucky kid to have experience in programming at a pretty young age. I went to the University of Vermont and joined their Computer Engineering program. I studied Computer Science and Business.

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Featured Videos

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from the Czech Republic: Runecast CEO Stan Markov (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about how things evolved now that you have some money and have a team together. How are things going in 2018 and 2019?

Catching Up On Readings: Microsoft Inspire 2023

This feature from Tech Republic covers the highlights of the Microsoft Inspire event held virtually last week including innovations, investments, programs, and partner opportunities in new forms of AI such as ChatGPT and Copilot. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

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July 27 – 613th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable Spotlighting Women Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 613th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, July 27, 2023, at 8:30 p.m. India IST/ 8 a.m. PDT / 11 a.m. EDT / 5 p.m. CEST.

During this special roundtable, women entrepreneurs will have first priority to Pitch. 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!

612th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development

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

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from the Czech Republic: Runecast CEO Stan Markov (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the VMWare Marketplace. How many VMWare admins are on the marketplace?

Stan Markov: It’s not the biggest source of leads. If I compare it to the AWS Marketplace or the Azure marketplace, VMWare Marketplace is not as popular. It’s one of the ways to get to either VMWare or third-party products.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from the Czech Republic: Runecast CEO Stan Markov (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: They invested because the five of you had deep domain knowledge. This is a very desirable team.

Stan Markov: In addition to that, we had all the certificates. I was the first one in the entire IBM to get the highest VMWare certificate – VMWare Certified Design Expert. Only around 300 in the world have it.

Roundtable Recap: July 20 – Startup Ecosystem Development Strategy for Underdeveloped India

During this week’s roundtable, we did a strategy session on how to develop startup ecosystems and pipelines of entrepreneurs outside of the six major metros based on my blog series, Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: A Strategy Discussion. Very interesting discussion.

BRIKS Technology

For our entrepreneur pitch, we had Kiran Das from Cochin, India, pitch BRIKS Technology, a Generative AI startup focused on e-commerce sales enablement through virtual assistants and chatbots.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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