1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The ecosystem has come together for sure. I’m a big fan of capital-efficient startups and fundamentals-oriented startups. In January, we analyzed 20 Indian unicorns. I didn’t consider two as overvalued. The rest were dramatically overvalued. That means that people are investing in the future and expecting that the valuation is going to get back-filled, which is the way unicorn investing often happens.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Does your thesis also translate into FinTech? FinTech has a big B2B element to it and there is a lot going on. India is a very big FinTech market.

Krishnakumar Natarajan: You’re absolutely right. Fintech is becoming a very large market in India. The public digital infrastructure to support FinTech in India is also well-established starting with the identity management system to the UPI which is peer-to-peer payment almost with no fee.

Best of Bootstrapping: Startup Deaths by Overfunding

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

Funding = Success, right? I wish it did. But entrepreneurial tracks are littered with carcasses of dead startups that were very well funded, some to the tune of hundreds of millions. As a case in point, watch this 2 minutes 31 second video: Death By Overfunding.

If you prefer to read instead of watching, read the Nasty Gal story here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 1)

Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder of Mela Ventures and former CEO of Mindtree, discusses the Indian Venture ecosystem.

Sramana Mitra: I’m looking forward to catching up with you. We haven’t talked in a while, but we have followed each other’s work for a long time. Catch me up on Mela Ventures.

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an EdTech Company to $10M: Boom Cards CEO Mary Oemig (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The $10 million in revenue, was that also 50/50?

Mary Oemig: Yes. It’s pretty standard that it splits that way. There is some seasonality. The pandemic was this weird surge. This school year is the new baseline, but the pattern has been consistent over the years.

Sramana Mitra: Is this still bootstrapped?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping SmartBuyGlasses to $50M

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

SmartBuyGlasses Co-CEO David Menning has bootstrapped a global e-commerce venture from Hong Kong. Splendid execution!

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?

David Menning: I grew up in Sydney. I’ve been educated in Australia. In my later years, I studied at universities overseas both in Canada and Japan for a little while. It was this time when I was abroad spending time in different countries that I was exposed to different business models, cultures, and people.

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From Brazil to a US HRTech Success Story: Talentify: Othamar Filho (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: At what point did you start to get a steady stream of new customers?

Othamar Filho: It was in the middle of 2018 – a year and a half later. We started to see revenue from our direct clients grow. The reason was we were simplifying the product. What will help them make a decision faster? What will be something that would solve a pain point right now? That was the path. About two and a half years later, we got to a point where Cielo was 20% of our revenue.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of customers did you get that traction from?

Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an EdTech Company to $10M: Boom Cards CEO Mary Oemig (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: All this is developed by Eric and your Vietnamese developer?

Mary Oemig: We now have a much bigger team. The original was developed by someone who left. We couldn’t continue to pay him and has come back. Eric and Zach were our early developers. We now have about five US-based engineers with one in Indiana, one in Wyoming, and the rest in Seattle.

Sramana Mitra: Your business model is a membership fee?