Building a Cutting Edge Drone Technology Company: Tom Walker, CEO of DroneUp (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Are you then pivoting the business largely into the delivery sector?

Tom Walker: We’re splitting the company into two. There are so many opportunities in the services side. Our growth is about equal in terms of the delivery and the growth of the services. We had been seeing 900% growth on the services side. It’s a viable business. Because we do that with independent contractors, we can grow that business without having to grow our overhead quite as much.

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From Solo Techie Entrepreneur to High Growth, Profitable Enterprise AI Success Story: Findability Sciences CEO Anand Mahurkar (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic. In all the different use cases that you have applied Findability, what are some of the most powerful use cases that warrant productization as solutions?

Anand Mahurkar: Post-pandemic, we are seeing self-reliance on multiple business processes. One is the supply chain because of the disruption in the market by the pandemic. We have built an AI best practice framework called CUPP – Collection, Unification, Processing, and Presentation. Unfortunately, all the AI companies just focus on the processing part. The collection and unification of the data are very powerful.

580th Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 580th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, June 23, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

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580th Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting in 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 580th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, June 23, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST.CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

E-Commerce Unicorns 2022: RIDI Looks to International Markets for Webcomics

According to a recent report, the global Webtoons market is estimated to grow from $3.3 billion in 2021 to $22.22 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 31%. South Korean players are big players in the industry with one of them recently joining the Unicorn club.

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?

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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