Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite’s CEO Jonathan Foltz (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: When does the acquisition happen?

Jonathan Foltz: After that, I was thinking that e-commerce is the way. We did $5 million in a month. Then I decided to raise money. We send the pitch deck out. We got a lot of interest. We came across a family office. The family office loved what we had. We gave them the story.

They said, “We love your company, but we only invest in public companies.” I never really thought about being a public company. I was always okay being private. I can do it, but do I want to do it.

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Roundtable Recap: March 3 – Discussion on Pre-Seed Financing

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Julie Lein, Managing Partner at Urban Innovation Fund discussing Pre-Seed and Seed funding in companies focused on the betterment of cities.

IdeaMySpace

As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Sidhartha Domathoti from Hyderabad, India, pitch IdeaMySpace, a vertically integrated business for designing and building homes.

Nriway

Next we had Chintesh Chopkar from Nagpur, India, pitch Nriway, a 2-sided marketplace for NRIs to get tasks done in India.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Cloud Stocks: BigCommerce Rides on TikTok’s Growth

Ecommerce platform BigCommerce recently reported its fourth-quarter results that outpaced market expectations. The company is looking to tap into the growing social commerce market to help its customers expand their market reach.

Video FAQs

4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What was the new idea?

Kashyap Deorah: On-demand commerce was called hyperlocal. I was fascinated with the Stripe and Twilio API businesses. In retail and e-commerce, what shovels can I build? What became clear was on-demand commerce is about the ability to fulfill things right here right now. The proposition is ingrained in logistics.

The logistics model relies on some heavy location and mapping infrastructure that only a few companies have. Backed with a theme of democratizing disaggregated markets, how about democratizing this location and mapping infrastructure for all the e-commerce players in the world. It became the logistics API for on-demand commerce.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Infragistics for 30 Years

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

Dean Guida, CEO of Infragistics, has a real passion for the elegance, simplicity, and beauty of software development. He has built a company celebrating these values.

Sramana Mitra: We will start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?

Dean Guida: When I was six years old, my mom and dad got divorced. I moved to Miami, Florida. I saw how much my mom struggled to make money for us, When I was eight years old, I just wanted to work. I convinced the maintenance man in the apartment that I was living in to let me do his work. He would pay me off the books.

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Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite’s CEO Jonathan Foltz (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you have the same marketing strategy?

Jonathan Foltz: Yes. Our expertise was definitely Facebook and Instagram. You can do this with influencer marketing. We can go from $10,000 a day to over $300,000 in less than a week. The scalability is unparalleled with Facebook and Instagram.

Sramana Mitra: I guess there are two questions that come from that. Did you have to do buy-one-get-two-free with this new product?

566th Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 566th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, March 3, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

566th Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting In 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 566th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, March 3, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!