Best of Bootstrapping: Serial Bootstrapper Bootstrapped to $27M

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

This is a wonderful story from 2016 of a serial bootstrapper, then Tanga CEO, Jeremy Young. He built a wonderful e-commerce business similar to Groupon, but with no outside money.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s got back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Jeremy Young: I was born in Spokane, Washington. My dad had ended up moving our family across the border to Idaho, which is about 45 minutes away. That’s where I grew up. I have six brothers and sisters—two older brothers and four younger sisters. I was raised in a middle lower class home. My dad worked the same job for 30 years. My oldest brother, Jeff, who is five years older than me ended up getting several jobs while he was in high school and got me interested in business and work in general. He’s a role model to me. He worked very hard and always had lots of money. He was able to buy cars, stereo equipments, and video games. I learned from him and really wanted to earn money as well.

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Jim Rebesco, CEO of Striveworks (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In the previous example that you gave about stock markets and hurricanes, how do you adjust? Let’s say you have a Black Swan event, how do you put that into the model? That’s an interesting use case.

Jim Rebesco: It’s really interesting. This double-clicks on that notion that the data that goes into a model needs to look like data that’s going to be run in production. In a Black Swan event, the very core answer is how quickly can I gather a new dataset from the outside world. If you say there were X number of hurricanes in the past, and you see a hurricane that looks like those. It could be true or it might not be true.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped an IoT Company from North Carolina

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

North Carolina, at one point, had a large concentration of cellular technology companies. Some of that talent then came together around IoT, including Bob Witter, CEO of Device Solutions. He shared his journey with me in 2016.

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 circumstances?

Bob Witter: I was born in Springville, New York. It’s in the western part of New York. I grew up in central New York. I went to school at State University of New York and graduated in 1981 with degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics. I started my career in Rochester with Eastman Kodak company in the medical products division that was brand new at that time. I learned a great deal about how to do medical products that has certainly served me well even today at Device Solutions.

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Video FAQs

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Jim Rebesco, CEO of Striveworks (Part 2)

Jim Rebesco: Another challenge that we face is the data-centric AI movement. The data-centric AI movement says, “We can do a lot better in preparing and building analytics if we spend that marginal hour not on playing with model architecture but rather if we think, very thoughtfully, about the data we’re using to train the models.”

This is a trend that is mirrored in the more commercial side of analytics. What does that mean? This means that these data-enabled companies are now seeing this trend of increasing personalization. Maybe the model that works best for me may be very different for you.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped an Education Company

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

Tod Browndorf, CEO of Coggno, has built an interesting online education company focused on specific niche course types. Read on to learn more from our conversation in 2016.

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

Tod Browndorf: Wow! We’re really going way back. I’m originally from the east coast. I was born in South Carolina but was raised in New York and New Jersey for most of my life. I lost my father when I was 10 and a half years old. I started working very early in life. He was in the manufacturing business. I started working early through school. I travelled the world pretty extensively. I lived in Australia for quite a while. I lived in the Middle East and eventually started my career in Finance. I started off as a trader on Wall Street, then later here in San Francisco.

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Jim Rebesco, CEO of Striveworks (Part 1)

This conversation deep dives into the nascent ML Ops industry.

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

Jim Rebesco: I’m one of the co-founders at Striveworks. We’re an ML Ops company that focuses on where we see analytics going in the future – a future where analytics would be cheap and ubiquitous; and the scaffolding that supports them disappears. We provide that as a platform to our customers.

Catching Up On Readings: Minecraft AI

This feature from MIT Technology Review by William Douglas Heaven looks in detail the breakthrough in imitation learning achieved by making a Minecraft-playing bot watch 70,000 hours of videos of people playing Minecraft. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

December 15 – 597th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 597th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, December 15, 2022, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 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!