1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dheeraj Pandey, Founder of Nutanix (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This is a topic that I’ve been very passionate about – The Renaissance Mind. I have a large body of writings on this. If you follow me on LinkedIn, I have a series called Colors where I publish paintings. I ask people to meditate on just that painting. The whole point is to draw attention to the visual impact of colors and design.

I wrote a series quite a few years ago on the future of Silicon Valley being at the cusp of design and technology, but it hasn’t gone that way. I thought that movement of bringing those two sides together would come faster. Instead, we went deep into data, AI, and machine learning. The design side went by the sidelines. The liberal arts and the humanities side went on the sideline. That still remains to be done.

Featured Videos

Colors: Church

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Church

Church | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 8  x 8, On Paper

Bootstrapping a FinTech Startup by Piggybacking with Services: Quavo Co-Founder David Chmielewski (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Who on your team was the key sales guy?

David Chmielewski: That’s Joe McLean who’s now our CEO. He was able to sell and fill clients with that confidence. I also did a fair amount of sales myself, but it was more of solutions consulting and technical design. Joe and I got into a pretty good pattern where he’d handle the business folks and I’d handle the ops and technology folks. We would tackle sales in that direction and it got a lot of deals done.

Video FAQs

Best of Bootstrapping: What is the Best Bootstrapping Tactic for B-to-B Startups?

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

What is the best bootstrapping tactic for B-to-B startups? Solve an acute customer pain. Get paid an advance to do so. Leeyo Software Founder Jagan Reddy followed this strategy to bootstrap to $20 million. He built a niche software that solved a very specific problem and started selling it to enterprises for a lot of money. This story from 2016 is a textbook case study of how well you can scale with no outside financing if you can identify a burning pain point and customers who are willing to pay a LOT to solve that pain. Leeyo Software was acquired by Zuora in 2017.

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

Jagan Reddy: I was born in India. All my schooling was done in India.

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September 29 – 592nd 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 592nd FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, September 29, 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!

591st Roundtable Recording with Anirudh Damani, Artha Venture Fund

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

Roundtable Recap: September 22 – Spotlight on India’s Startup Ecosystem

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Anirudh Damani, Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund. We had a terrific discussion on the Indian Startup Ecosystem and its trends.

Wast-e-collecter

As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Puneet Agarwal from Jaipur, India, pitch Wast-e-collector, a concept stage venture.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Cloud Stocks: DocuSign Focuses on Integrations

According to a recent report, the global digital signature market size was estimated to grow at 28% CAGR from $4.4 billion in 2021 to $42 billion by 2030. DocuSign (Nasdaq: DOCU) recently announced its second quarter results that surpassed market expectations, but the company’s outlook was not too impressive.