Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Grain Cofounder and COO Carl Memnon (Part 1)

Carl discusses Grain’s FinTech innovation, and also some of the unique ways in which his company has been financed. Excellent conversation.

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

Featured Videos

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped in Europe, Raised Money and Went Global in the US

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

We’ve seen some excellent European companies make successful transitions into becoming global software companies. MP Objects CEO Martin Verwijmeren shares an excellent and inspiring story for European startups to emulate.

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?

Martin Verwijmeren: I’m from the Netherlands but living in Boston these days. Before moving to Boston, I lived in Amsterdam. I was working for our European headquarters in Rotterdam. Nowadays, I’m working from our US headquarters in Boston.

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Will Meta’s Bet on Metaverse Pay Back?

The current economic conditions are sparing no one. Earlier last week, Facebook (Nasdaq: META) announced its second quarter results that missed all market expectations. The company also provided a weaker outlook, attributing it to market conditions and continued investment in its growth areas.

Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anup Jain, Managing Partner of Orios Venture Partners (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You mentioned earlier that the Indian startup boom has happened in two cities – Bangalore and Delhi NCR. We’ve had a lot of success in Chennai as well. Some of the bigger successes came out of Chennai. What are you seeing in other places?

We are seeing companies coming out of Chandigarh and many other places. That’s part of the vision of One Million by One Million – to enable not only all corners of India but all corners of the world. We have companies from Tanzania. We have companies from Chandigarh. I’m from Calcutta, so I’ve always had a soft corner for Calcutta. It is a different India. It is a different world. How is that impacting the startup ecosystem?

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Darvis CEO Jan-Philipp Mohr (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If you look around, what are some open problems that you would point new entrepreneurs towards?

Jan-Philipp Mohr: There are a lot of other sensory technologies which are exciting and could add a lot of value. We have a very big lab in Nashville where we try out a lot of things. It’s a very green field. In my opinion, there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to distributed computing, especially when you run multiple models and when you want to embed models in chips. There are still physical limitations in these hardware environments.

Cloud Stocks: Twilio’s Strategy Post Segment Acquisition

According to a recent report, the global CDP market is expected to grow at a CAGR 25% over the next few years to reach $6.94 billion by 2029 from $1.42 billion in 2022. Communications PaaS leader Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) is focusing on building the world’s leading customer engagement platform following its Segment acquisition in 2020.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anup Jain, Managing Partner of Orios Venture Partners (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is your estimate of the heavily-funded unicorns in the Indian ecosystem? How many of those are going to become sustainable and successful companies?

Anup Jain: My wish is that each one of them does become sustainable. I haven’t performed that analysis but I think a large number, 80% and up, should be walking a straight line and will be able to do that. I don’t have any particular names in mind on the balance of 20%.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about go-to-market strategy. What are you seeing as some of the most effective go-to-market strategies out there? We are hearing a lot about these short videos like TikTok and reels. What are you seeing?

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Darvis CEO Jan-Philipp Mohr (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What does the competitive landscape look like?

Jan-Philipp Mohr: There are a lot of AI companies and computer vision companies out there, but we try to concentrate on the logistical aspects of it. There are not that many competitors. On the one hand, there is RFID. On the other hand, there are some US companies and British companies who are doing computer vision in a similar context. There’re some more on the retail side and some more on the strict detection element. We tried to concentrate on the mapping aspect of things.