Sramana Mitra: To do all this, how much of this is your proprietary technology and how much of it is system integration using other people’s technology?
Tim Panagos: Our strategy was to adopt things that were already existing in the market rather than building from scratch. It’s my belief that we intersect with the IoT, cloud, and AI macro trends. All of these technologies exist already in the marketplace. It’s not a matter of whether we need a better sensor or we need better AI; it’s about taking these technologies that are on the shelf, pre-integrating them, and making it so that you can scale in a business.
>>>Matthew Benson: We built the MVP for eFuse. Almost an entire year later, we launched the product on January 2, 2020. On the initial launch, we didn’t have much success. We were just getting rolling and stumbling during the first three to four months. COVID hits right about that time. All eyeballs go to gaming.
One of the pieces we picked up on is a lot of people were turning to run online eSports tournaments. We pivoted the business to focus on building eSports infrastructure to facilitate different types of competition. We built this platform that we call the Arena. The first day we launched it, we had 10,000 visitors. From that point forward, we scaled the business to 500,000 in that first year.
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If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
What a wonderful story of an e-commerce company bootstrapping to $12 million from a small town called Horsens in Denmark. When we spoke in 2019, all of the 60 employees working under TrendHim CEO Sebastian Petersen were working out of Horsens.
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?
Sebastian Petersen: I’m from Denmark. I would say I had a pretty ordinary background. Both my parents were working in the public sector. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit together with one of my best buddies growing up. We were always together.

We discuss IoT use cases in commercial real estate and the open opportunities thereof.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the company.
Tim Panagos: I’m the Founder and CTO of Microshare. We’re the market-leading wireless IoT platform built for commercial real estate.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click on that and talk about how IoT features in real estate.
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This interview is a fascinating look into the world of Gaming. Read on!
Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Matthew Benson: I’m born and raised in Ohio. I grew up an hour south of Columbus in a small town called Chillicothe. There wasn’t much going on down there.
>>>This feature from Crunchbase News analyzes the funding trends for crypto startups. Investment in VC-backed crypto companies slowed during the first half of the year to about $9.3 billion. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.
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Entrepreneurs are invited to the 583rd FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, July 21, 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!
Mikel Lindsaar: The really cool thing about StoreConnect business model is that Salesforce gets their license revenue and they get a very sticky customer who then is investing more into the platform. The partners love it because they get a client who has an upfront setup fee but has a part of their business related to that partner’s consulting revenue.
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