1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Zain Jaffer, Partner at Blue Field Capital (Part 1)

Zain Jaffer, Partner at Blue Field Capital, discusses trends in PropTech.

Sramana Mitra: Our focus today is primarily on the investing that you had recently started. If you want to set some context about your entrepreneurial background, that would be great.

Zain Jaffer: As soon as I discovered computers, I started to mess around, code, and design things. I’ve always been at it trying to build things. Sometimes, it worked out. Most of the time, it doesn’t. I have had a lot of attempts. All you need is to be lucky once. It can change your life completely. I had a big exit. It was $718 million back in 2019 when I started an advertising tech company.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Niche E-commerce Company to $20M

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

Niche e-commerce still produces compelling success stories. Read on to see how CEO Brian Lim built iHeartRaves.

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?

Brian Lim: I was raised in LA County. My parents immigrated here to escape communism in China and Cambodia. I grew up very poor. We bootstrapped our company back in 2010 with $100 and turned it into a $20 million a year company.

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Leveraging Channels and Slovenia to build Successful Businesses: Simon Taylor, CEO of HYCU (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The business partner who has all these outsourcing companies, is he Slovenian?

Simon Taylor: Serbian actually. He still runs a large outsourcing company. We spun out from them. We started moving very quickly. We added our first 500 customers in our first year. We added a thousand in the second.

Sramana Mitra: This is a crowded space. What was so special about HYCU?

Video FAQs

Roundtable Recap: May 5 – Spotlight on the Ohio Startup Ecosystem

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Bill Baumel, Managing Director at Ohio Innovation Fund, one of the pioneers of the Ohio startup ecosystem.

CaterBite

As for entrepreneur pitch, we had Boddu Venkat Sujith from Visakhapatnam, India, pitch CaterBite, a concept arbitrage on EZCater, a Unicorn.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julie Lein, Managing Partner at Urban Innovation Fund (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The narrative in the media is how much money have you raised. The maximum focus is on the people raising the most money. That is a flawed way of evaluating companies. There are a lot of innovations that are done in a capital-efficient way. As such, they have a lot more options. The exit option is larger. They are not so dependent on a constant infusion of capital to sustain themselves.

Julie Lein: I agree wholeheartedly. We call those vanity metrics. Capital raise and valuation are extremely important barometers, but they’re not the only ones. They’re the ones that tend to get the most coverage in the media.

574th Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 574th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, May 5, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

574th Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting in 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 574th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, May 5, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

Leveraging Channels and Slovenia to build Successful Businesses: Simon Taylor, CEO of HYCU (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the sales side. How did you leverage the Citrix channel to reach the customer base?

Simon Taylor: I was in my late 20s. I flew to Fort Lauderdale where the Citrix headquarters was. I walked in and just said I wanted to talk to the Alliances team. I was introduced to Vicky Pomarico who was an Alliance Marketing at Citrix. She said, “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what your company does.” She spent about an hour with me. I said, “I just want to learn how we can be the best possible partner for you. What are the things that partners do that light you up?”