Building a Cutting Edge Drone Technology Company: Tom Walker, CEO of DroneUp (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you revenue-wise? $20 million?

Tom Walker: We’ll do more than that this year. To put it in perspective, we were 12 full-time people in January of 2021. Now we have 25,000 drone operators. We are 205 full-time employees. By the end of this year, we’ll be at a little over 650.

Sramana Mitra: My next question is business structuring. This is hypergrowth. What kind of a business are you building? How much of your business is software products? How much of it is services? How much of it is human services?

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Thursday, June 23 – 580th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 580th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, June 23, 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!

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Ultra Mobile to Over $100 Million

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

I have long believed that Go BIG or Go HOME is complete BS. I have seen entrepreneur after entrepreneur build a small but profitable, slower growth business as a first outing, followed by a much larger, higher growth business as a follow-on venture. When we spoke in 2017, Ultra Mobile Co-founder Rizwan Kassim had done exactly that.

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?

Rizwan Kassim: My mom is from East Africa. My father was born in Karachi. They both came here in the 70’s. I was born in Simi Valley, California, and lived there for about a decade and then moved up to Victorville. I went to UCLA.

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E-Commerce Unicorns 2022: Whatnot Builds a Flywheel for Influencer-Driven E-Commerce

According to a recently published study, the Global Influencer Marketing Platform market is projected to grow at 30.8% CAGR to reach $90.2 billion by 2030 from $8.4 billion in 2021. While social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest are the biggest platforms available for this kind of e-commerce, there are other players, like Whatnot, who are making their presence felt in the market.

From Solo Techie Entrepreneur to High Growth, Profitable Enterprise AI Success Story: Findability Sciences CEO Anand Mahurkar (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you get funding?

Anand Mahurkar: Late 2017.

Sramana Mitra: This was after how long from founding?

Anand Mahurkar: About six years.

Sramana Mitra: You had substantial revenue already?

Building a Cutting Edge Drone Technology Company: Tom Walker, CEO of DroneUp (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you learn that there was this segment that has this need in the shipping segment?

Tom Walker: Port and port security. The problem at that time was there were so many industries that we knew could use it. I’ll give you an example from the insurance industry. A storm comes through an area and they’re sending inspectors to walk around and assess the damage. We knew that we could put a drone out and capture all of this in high resolution. We just knew the insurance industry was going to embrace us.

From Solo Techie Entrepreneur to High Growth, Profitable Enterprise AI Success Story: Findability Sciences CEO Anand Mahurkar (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In launching this company, did you bootstrap? How did you get the company off the ground?

Anand Mahurkar: It was bootstrapped. I had a $10,000 bank account. Probably we are the only enterprise AI company that is profitable and revenue-making with no debt. I bootstrapped all these years. I got my first customer six months after starting the business.

Sramana Mitra: You wrote the software and you sold the software?

E-Commerce Unicorns 2022: Lofty Valuations for Profitable D2C E-Commerce Players Heyday and Vuori

According to the US Department of Commerce, e-commerce sales in the US grew 14.7% to $870 billion in 2021. The global e-commerce sales are expected to grow at 14.7% from 2020-2027. The industry is attracting a slew of entrepreneurs looking to cash in on this growth, resulting in the creation of several unicorn players.