1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With BV Jagadeesh, Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures (Part 1)

BV Jagadeesh, Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures, and a super accomplished serial entrepreneur, discusses funding Bootstrapping with Services ventures.

Sramana Mitra: BV is a very well-known and accomplished entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and I’ve known him for a very long time. It’s great to have you here.

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Building a Medication Management Startup Through Multiple Pivots: Medisafe Co-Founder and CTO Rotem Shor (Part 1)

Rotem represents yet another point of view of a software developer/technologist who successfully transitioned to an entrepreneur in an unfamiliar domain: pharmaceutical.

In that journey, he paired up with his brother who was more the business person in the duo. This is a common strategy for developers to become entrepreneurs, although, I generally
believe that developers can learn the business side as well.

The story also traces the pivots that were necessary to find product-market fit, as well as the failures that triggered each pivot.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Art.com CEO Josh Chodniewicz (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Getting companies fundable is a high-touch process. That is not necessarily a scalable process. I would say we may be the only accelerator in the world that has done some scalability on that. We have created a lot of curriculum. We’ve done so many now. It’s like pattern matching. That takes time.

One of the things that we’ve done is we’ve released a large chunk of our curriculum on Udemy. Udemy has 50 million users. My point is, if you take on the job of trying to coach these people, that is very difficult. Then comes the issue of leading the round or just following.

Video FAQs

Cloud Stocks: Coupa Focuses on Key Products to Restart Decelerating Performance

According to a recent report, the global SaaS Spend Management Software market is expected to grow at 22% CAGR from $611 million in 2021 to reach $2.46 billion by 2028. San Mateo-based Coupa (Nasdaq: COUP) recently announced its fourth quarter results that failed to impress the market. The company’s weaker outlook sent the stock plummeting in the after-hours trading session.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Art.com CEO Josh Chodniewicz (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after Art.com?

Josh Chodniewicz: We were in San Francisco. I moved to New York and lived a couple of years there. Frankly, I think I dealt with an identity crisis. All I knew was Art.com. I had to get around that. I started making investments in startups. I saw quite a bit of success in that.

Sramana Mitra: What did you invest in that really did well?

From Hardcore Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Cybellum CEO Slava Bronfman (Part 5)

Slava Bronfman: It was a better year in terms of sales. Earlier, a lot of our sales were based on physical conferences. It’s hard to compete as a small startup. If you go to a conference and you have a small booth, it’s hard to compete. Now remote working levels the playing field. We felt that it was easier for us to approach customers remotely. We have customers around the globe. We have customers in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan. It was relatively easier than before.

Sramana Mitra: I’ve heard this from a lot of startups. The pandemic has been a boon for them for exactly the same reasons.

IPOs 2021: Sprinklr Leverages AI to Grow its Enterprise Customer Base

According to a recent report, the global customer experience management (CXM) market was valued at $8.79 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at 18% CAGR from 2022 to 2030 is driven by the increasing need among organizations to adopt customer experience strategies, such as regular communication and engagement to deliver the best service performance to customers in real-time. New York-based Sprinklr (NYSE:CXM) is a leading player in the market that went public last year and continues to deliver strong results.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Art.com CEO Josh Chodniewicz (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: We are now in 2004?

Josh Chodniewicz: 2001 was when we acquired Art.com. Then 2004 was when we raised $30 million and combined it with our leading competitor at that time called AllPosters. I called up the other CEO and said, “We can shoot bullets at each other or we can join and shoot them at the rest of the world.” We put the businesses together in 2005.

Sramana Mitra: You ran the company?