Colors: Le Ciel III

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 – Le Ciel III

Le Ciel III | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor | 9  x 12, On Paper

Featured Videos

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Florian Eggenschwiler, Chief Product Officer of Xovis (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Who are the buyers?

Florian Eggenschwiler: It’s usually the airports. There are a number of stakeholders involved that get access to the data. It’s usually the airport that we work with directly. There are also the landlords. They’re the ones that install hardware into the ceiling. They usually tend to be open with this information with government agencies, security checkpoint provider, airline, or ground handling personnel. It could also be the regulator.

Best of Bootstrapping: How Ownership Matters

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

For those of you rushing to raise venture capital with a deck of slides or a minimum viable product, let me offer you a challenge: How can you get to a $20 million pre-money valuation in Series A, raise $5 million, and keep control of 80% of the equity?

That’s what Christian Chabot, founder of Tableau Software, can teach you from his real-life experience. Chabot, needless to say, did so by bootstrapping the early stages of his company, validating the customer need, building a great product in the domain of analytics and visualization, and generating serious revenue and OEM partnerships before going out to raise any venture financing at all.

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Video FAQs

Roundtable Recap: May 26 – Concept Financing is a Highly Improbable Event

During this week’s roundtable, we covered how unlikely concept financing is, especially for first time entrepreneurs.

Kula Konnection

Up first we had Chandan Bilagunda from Bangalore, India, pitch Kula Konnection, a concept-stage venture that he wants to fund.

The Buyers and Sellers Club

Next we had Federico Amaya from Helena, Montana, pitch The Buyers and Sellers Club, a real estate business.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Palo Alto’s Multi Platform Approach Delivers Results

According to a report published earlier this year, the global cyber security market is projected to grow from $155.83 billion in 2022 to $376.32 billion by 2029 at a CAGR of over 13%. The war in Ukraine is expected to drive 2022 spend even higher. Security player Palo Alto Networks (NYSE:PANW) continues to expand its market presence through its multi-platform strategy.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Florian Eggenschwiler, Chief Product Officer of Xovis (Part 1)

A fascinating conversation about how Xovis is applying AI to modeling human behavior in public spaces.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by giving our audience a bit of your background as well as the background of the company.

Florian Eggenschwiler: I’m the Chief Product Officer at Xovis. Xovis is a Swiss-based company helping the world rethink people flow. We do that by deploying our own 3D sensors that understand people’s movement. Then we have a variety of software applications that make sense of this data to help a variety of industries to understand how people move through our physical world and initiate change to optimize the flow of people.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Starmind CEO Marc Vontobel (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You have chosen certain markets to go after. What’s happening in the broader ecosystem that you’re playing in with the same kinds of applications and use cases but in different geographies or maybe different use cases. Who is playing in your space that you’re watching from the corner of your eye?

I’ve seen the solution that you’re describing. Today, AI is at its most mature state. I still remember companies that I saw in exactly the same application, but they failed. Timing is a big deal. For you, this is good timing. Who are the other players in your space that you are watching?

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: ImpriMed CEO Sungwon Lim (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about your business model. Your doctors are your end customers?

Sungwon Lim: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Is it a subscription service or a diagnostic model?

Sungwon Lim: We charge per service order. Our customers are hospitals and veterinarian oncologists. We sell our service to them and they add their own margin to the pet owners. Pet owners are usually the payers. We are B2B.