Building an eSports Venture from Ohio to $10M+ in Revenue: eFuse CEO Matthew Benson (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic! What are some of the nuances of go-to-market strategy that you have learned?

Matthew Benson: We took a shot at this influencer-based model. We created a tournament for a single influencer. Once we saw the spark, we doubled down on it. It was based on being receptive to the community and listening. That platform has become our main revenue driver.

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tim Panagos, CTO of Microshare (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: To do all this, how much of this is your proprietary technology and how much of it is system integration using other people’s technology?

Tim Panagos: Our strategy was to adopt things that were already existing in the market rather than building from scratch. It’s my belief that we intersect with the IoT, cloud, and AI macro trends. All of these technologies exist already in the marketplace. It’s not a matter of whether we need a better sensor or we need better AI; it’s about taking these technologies that are on the shelf, pre-integrating them, and making it so that you can scale in a business.

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Building an eSports Venture from Ohio to $10M+ in Revenue: eFuse CEO Matthew Benson (Part 2)

Matthew Benson: We built the MVP for eFuse. Almost an entire year later, we launched the product on January 2, 2020. On the initial launch, we didn’t have much success. We were just getting rolling and stumbling during the first three to four months. COVID hits right about that time. All eyeballs go to gaming.

One of the pieces we picked up on is a lot of people were turning to run online eSports tournaments. We pivoted the business to focus on building eSports infrastructure to facilitate different types of competition. We built this platform that we call the Arena. The first day we launched it, we had 10,000 visitors. From that point forward, we scaled the business to 500,000 in that first year.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping TrendHim from a Small Town to $12M

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What a wonderful story of an e-commerce company bootstrapping to $12 million from a small town called Horsens in Denmark. When we spoke in 2019, all of the 60 employees working under TrendHim CEO Sebastian Petersen were working out of Horsens.

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?

Sebastian Petersen: I’m from Denmark. I would say I had a pretty ordinary background. Both my parents were working in the public sector. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit together with one of my best buddies growing up. We were always together.

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Tim Panagos, CTO of Microshare (Part 1)

We discuss IoT use cases in commercial real estate and the open opportunities thereof.

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

Tim Panagos: I’m the Founder and CTO of Microshare. We’re the market-leading wireless IoT platform built for commercial real estate.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click on that and talk about how IoT features in real estate.

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Building an eSports Venture from Ohio to $10M+ in Revenue: eFuse CEO Matthew Benson (Part 1)

This interview is a fascinating look into the world of Gaming. Read on!

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

Matthew Benson: I’m born and raised in Ohio. I grew up an hour south of Columbus in a small town called Chillicothe. There wasn’t much going on down there.