Building an AI-Powered Pharmaceutical Services Business: VIDA CEO Susan Wood (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you succeed in raising venture capital?

Susan Wood: Within the state, yes. The last round was a couple of years ago. That was with First Analysis out of Chicago. I’ve got some Silicon Valley money, but mostly from Midwest.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a common storyline where you get the early-stage funding from the state through small VCs, and then the bigger funding from Chicago. This is a common Midwest story.

Featured Videos

New Generative AI Startup Course and Udemy Coupons for May

As a part of our aim to democratize entrepreneurship education at scale globally, we have packaged our proven 1Mby1M methodology for building technology startups into short courses on Udemy.

In addition to offering you up to 85% off the following Udemy courses this month, we are introducing our new Generative AI course, Generative AI Startup Strategy Case Studies. Through this course, we will continue to add our most informative and inspirational case studies of startups and entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated the Generative AI space.

These coupons will expire on May 31, 2023, so enroll today!

Bootstrapping:

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later with Sramana Mitra: TRY1MBY1MMAY2023BTS

>>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Using Services First, then Raised Capital to Exit

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

Chuck Bloomquist bootstrapped a security company using services all the way up to $16 million in revenue and then raised private equity capital to develop a platform product. Since we spoke in 2015, InteliSecure was acquired by Proofpoint.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? What kind of background leads up to this story?

Chuck Bloomquist: I was born in El Paso, Texas. I spent most of my youth living in the Pacific Basin. After we moved out of Texas, we moved to Wake Island. Then, we went to Hawaii and lived there for a year or so. Then, we moved up to Alaska and the UK. I came back to Texas for college. I then migrated to Colorado.

>>>

Video FAQs

Building an AI-Powered Pharmaceutical Services Business: VIDA CEO Susan Wood (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Did you work in engineering all through this period?

Susan Wood: No. When I left Hopkins, I actually worked in a business capacity. It was a very technical sale. I probably wasn’t as heavy on my programming ability as a lot of the people in the company. I started learning my MBA on the street at that time.

Sramana Mitra: Technical selling is a fabulous training ground for a tech career. They tend to be very good product people.

Building an AI-Powered Pharmaceutical Services Business: VIDA CEO Susan Wood (Part 1)

This conversation not only highlights Susan and VIDA’s journey but is an excellent analysis of the Pharmaceutical Services space. If you’re looking to do/doing a startup in this field, the conversation should be illuminating.

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

Catching Up On Readings: Google I/O 2023

This feature from The Verge covers the highlights of the Google I/O, Google’s annual developers conference held in Mountain View, California last week. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

606th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

Roundtable Recap: May 11 – Startups Working on Various Facets of Fashion E-Commerce

During this week’s roundtable, we had four excellent discussions. For those of you following these roundtables and the recordings, especially if you’re primarily in the learning phase, please use them as case studies and exercises that you can work on. Ask yourself how would you process my feedback? Put yourself in the investor’s shoes. Put yourself in the entrepreneur’s shoes.

MADSTO

First up, we had Prashanth Sathri from Bangalore, India, pitch MADSTO, a plus sized men’s clothing brand from India.

Zosper

Next, we had Diana Tkhamadokova from Dubai, UAE, pitch Zosper, a personalization front-end for fashion retailers.

Pabloo

Then Pabloo Alsahlani from San Francisco, California, pitched Pabloo, an app for processing store-credit for retailers of fashion and footwear.

Skimmet

Next M’Lisa Ellis from Las Vegas, Nevada, pitched Skimmet, a social media tracking app for brand mentions.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

>>>