Building a Capital-Efficient, Highly Scalable Smart City IoT Venture: LYT CEO Timothy Menard (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Was there a customer that you had in mind?

Timothy Menard: All sides – automotive and the communities they drove in.

Sramana Mitra: How did you get the company off the ground?

Timothy Menard: I applied for a Federal Small Business Research and Innovation grant. The company started on a quarter-million grant. I was able to use a portion of that and partner with the University of California – Irvine to have a road system and students of all classifications work on this digitalization concept.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Founder Bootstrapped to Over $10M from Australia

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

This is another wonderful story of a founder who diligently scaled his startup. DNA Behavior Founder Hugh Massie had bootstrapped to over $10 Million in revenue when we spoke in 2017.

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?

Hugh Massie: I was born in Sydney, Australia. I was privately-educated at a very good private school. When I finished that, I earned a degree in Commerce and Economics at the University of New South Wales. Following that, I became a Chartered Accountant and worked with Arthur Andersen for 10 years in auditing, mainly in the tax area. I worked in the Sydney office and then in the Singapore and Thailand offices as well.

After 10 years, I wanted to go out on the street and become an entrepreneur. That was really the start of my entrepreneurial journey. I had always been an investor though, ever since the age of 20. As soon as I got my first job, I bought a house and got an investment rental property and was always doing things that were related to investing.

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Indian E-Commerce Unicorns 2022: Good Glamm Targets Both Online and Offline D2C Market in India

According to a recent report, India’s beauty and personal care (BPC) market is estimated at $25.9 billion in 2020. It is projected to grow 8% annually to reach $32.7 billion by 2023. While traditional retailers continue to serve the market, there is a growing presence of e-commerce players as well. One such player is Good Glamm that recently joined the Unicorn club.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anupam Rastogi, General Partner of Emergent Ventures (Part 1)

Anupam Rastogi is General Partner at Emergent Ventures, a firm focused on B-to-B tech investments.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by getting you acquainted with our audience. Talk a bit about how you position your fund. Before that, give a little bit of your own background too.

Anupam Rastogi: I’ve been in the technology space for a very long time now. I studied Computer Science back in the 90s. I grew up in India and came over to the US. I started a career on the operating side, research, and then product management at larger companies and a couple of startups. These stints eventually had good outcomes.

Building a Capital-Efficient, Highly Scalable Smart City IoT Venture: LYT CEO Timothy Menard (Part 1)

You would think deep tech AI / IoT startups take gobs of venture capital to build. Read on to see how Tim has built an incredibly capital-efficient business with massive growth potential using grant money and revenues. Superb company!

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

Catching Up On Readings: WWDC 2022

This feature from Bloomberg by Mark Gurman covers the highlights and implications of the Worldwide Developers Conference last week where Apple unveiled a new version of CarPlay among other things. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Colors: Printemps V

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 – Printemps V

Printemps V | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper

Colors: Printemps IV

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 – Printemps IV

Printemps IV | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 9  x 12, On Paper