Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped ButcherBox to Significant Scale

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

Before the pandemic in 2018, ButcherBox Founder and CEO Mike Salguero shared a fascinating story of a subscription service for high-quality meat being delivered to consumer homes.

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

Mike Salguero: I was born in Paraguay. I’m the youngest of four kids. My parents divorced when I was six months old, and my mom moved up to western Massachusetts with her four children.

>>>

Featured Videos

Thursday, September 15 – 590th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 590th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, September 15, 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!

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.

Video FAQs

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.

>>>

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.