Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Salil and Kiran Pande, Co-Founders of VMock (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Between 2009 and the time you raised your seed financing, you figured that piece out. You figured out that you were going to go after the US career development offices and you were going to build this product in India.

Kiran Pande: Yes, he was leaning towards having the engineering team from people in IIT. The Bay Area is also very expensive and competitive to hire from. Just the cost of building an engineering team in the Bay Area would have been a lot more than we were able to do at that time. 

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Bootstrapping a Two-sided Marketplace: Mort Fertel, CEO of SudShare (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Who built the company? You or your son?

Mort Fertel: Both. We’re co-founders.

Sramana Mitra: The idea sounds great. It came out of your personal observation of your wife’s woes with laundry. It sounds like your son has the technical expertise. What was he doing at that time when he decided to put together this app?

IPOs 2021: Udemy Targets $223 Billion Market Opportunity

According to a recent HolonIQ study, the global online and offline education market was worth $2.6 trillion across K-12, higher education, corporate training, and online learning in 2019. Most of this instruction was conducted offline before the pandemic. However, the pandemic has accelerated the transition of corporate training, and in some cases, higher education, to the online medium. San Francisco-based Udemy, which went public on NASDAQ last week under the ticker UDMY, estimates that its market opportunity in online learning is $223 billion of which the global corporate opportunity is $71 billion and the global consumer opportunity accounts for the balance $152 billion in 2021.

Video FAQs

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Salil and Kiran Pande, Co-Founders of VMock (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you went out to raise money, you didn’t pitch it as an AI company?

Salil Pande: I didn’t pitch to anyone. All my seed investment came from my ex-boss. He connected to his ex-boss.

Sramana Mitra: Friends and family.

Roundtable Recap: November 4 – The 1Mby1M Ambassador Program for Building Entrepreneurship Communities

During this week’s roundtable, we held a Workshop on How to Build Communities of Entrepreneurs EVERYWHERE. The 1Mby1M Ambassador program has now been relaunched with a comprehensive revenue model.

mKonnekt

As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Seshu Madabushi from Dallas, Texas, pitched mKonnekt, a revenue-generating business within the restaurant ecosystem.

PickMee

Then, Felix Scholz from Auckland, New Zealand, pitching PickMee, a PropTech product.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bay Dynamics Co-founders Bootstrapped Using Services

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

Bay Dynamics Co-founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte wanted to work together on a new venture. They first built a services company, then introduced an OEM product, and eventually bootstrapped a product under their own brand. When we spoke in 2016, the company had just raised its first venture money after many years of being in business as a profitable, growing entity.

Sramana Mitra: One of you should probably get started. I want to go back to the very beginning of your journey, and learn about your pre-Bay Dynamics story. Where were you born, raised and, in what kind of background?

Feris Rifai: I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. That’s where I was raised till I was 18 years old. I then came to the United States to go to college. I went to school at Indiana University. It was a great experience for me. Throughout my journey when I was much younger in Lebanon, it was a bit of a difficult upbringing because we couldn’t find a way to get safety to be a part of our lives. I think it’s taught me a lot. It has helped me be, believe it or not, very optimistic.

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552nd Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 552nd FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, November 4, 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!

552nd Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting In 20 Minutes: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 552nd FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 20 minutes, on Thursday, November 4, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/4 p.m. CET/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!