Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Starmind CEO Marc Vontobel (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Bottomline is, you’re talking about narrowing the market down more and more to figure out where you want to penetrate the market and where you really want to build the business. Then there are sales channel issues. You have to put Salesforce going after each other’s markets. Let’s get to the technology side of what you’re doing. What datasets are you working with? Let’s take the pharma use case.

Marc Vontobel: There’s always a certain set of tools focused on the use case itself. In R&D, for example, we often see some kind of application that manages the new patterns that people are working on. That’s a very good source for us to learn.

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Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: ImpriMed CEO Sungwon Lim (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the dataset? Across all these categories, how many drugs and treatments are we talking about that you have modeled and have data for?

Sungwon Lim: Our first service which we commercialized last year is for dog blood cancer. What we are trying to do is help doctors make decisions. The 16 drugs that are used for lymphoma and leukemia are being tested on our platform. We collect the real-world actual treatment cases and provide our reports today.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping with Sophisticated Strategic Maneuvering

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

BioConnect Founder CEO Rob Douglas has built a thriving founder-financed business from Toronto using very sophisticated strategic maneuvering. I just loved discussing the strategic nuances of this business. You’ll learn a LOT from reading this story.

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?

Rob Douglas: I’m a Canadian. I was born just outside of Toronto. I have grown up in and around the city of Toronto. I’m married. I have two kids. Both of them are in their 20’s. I have spent most of my entrepreneurial life primarily focused on markets outside of Canada. US and EMEA have been primary markets over my career.

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Video FAQs

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Starmind CEO Marc Vontobel (Part 3)

Marc Vontobel: Without having very good positioning, we already created traction and signed some big deals with some Fortune 500 companies. That helped us find out the real use cases where we can have a real impact on the business. If you buy Starmind without having a clear use case in mind, you always depend on the vision of the buyer. We have found a few of those, but it’s not repeatable.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a very rare buyer who can take a technology and find an application for it. That’s not the way to build a company at all.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: ImpriMed CEO Sungwon Lim (Part 1)

Wonderful story of cutting edge application of AI in cancer treatment.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself, a bit of your background, and then ImpriMed.

Best of Bootstrapping: Mitch Russo Bootstrapped Timeslips to Exit with Sage

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

Co-founder CEO Mitch Russo tells the story of how he built Timeslips and sold it to Sage for $10.5 million in 1994. Very entertaining as well as instructive.

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?

Mitch Russo: I was born in New York. I was raised in a small community called Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. It was there that we basically started a rock band. Using the idea of how to build an entertainment platform as a rock band in high school, I learned a lot about entrepreneurship and I learned a lot about what it takes to make money and how to promote and share content.

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Thursday, May 26 – 576th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 576th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, May 26, 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!

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Starmind CEO Marc Vontobel (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Coming up with the product idea is one thing, but productizing and building a business is quite a different thing. This is where, I think, you made a choice of going the B2C route. You pivoted to B2B where you found more success. What was your experience of the business side of it? How did you learn what you needed to learn?

Marc Vontobel: First of all, a big mistake a lot of founders do at the beginning is to believe that the first idea is to be proven right. In many cases, the first idea may be the spark. The more you talk to people, you figure out it wasn’t exactly the right thing. You have to listen and open up.