Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When you went out for seed funding, what did you have? Did you have an MVP?

Omri Dor: We started working on it. In the beginning, it was me and Roey. For his other businesses, he had this building with offices. We were sitting there figuring out some stuff. We started thinking about what the product would look like. At that time, the market we had in mind was the Israeli market, which is a peer-to-peer, single renter, single landlord.

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From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: David Moss, Co-Founder, President and CTO of People Power Company (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: All these things that you talked about fit under positioning. Product positioning makes or breaks the business. You have to hit the right pain points, the right go-to-market strategy,and the right segmentation.

The next question I want to ask you is, you were tinkering with certain ideas in 2009, but the real idea around which you started building People Power took several years. Something like four years?

Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the genesis? What was the idea?

Omri Dor: I should mention that ever since I was 20, I would always keep a record of all my ideas. I would try to classify them. I would do due diligence on my own ideas. I did this a lot. Every once in a while when I hit something that is big, I would call whichever friend of mine was knowledgeable and would be a potential co-founder.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Entrepreneur Couple Bootstraps an E-commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding

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

Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani bootstrapped to multi-million dollars in revenue selling a private label product before quitting their jobs. In this story, you also get to see the nuances of running successful (and not so successful) crowdfunding campaigns. Very interesting journey and insights.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in background?

Kish Vasnani: I was born in Jaipur, India and moved to the US when I was about one year old. I grew up around the Atlanta area and finished school there. I moved to New York to help a friend of a friend start a software company, which was also bootstrapped. We were able to sell that to Thomson Reuters. I had the itch again to go out on my own. Very candidly, I was also fired from a couple of other jobs over the course of two years.

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Thursday, March 10 – 567th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 567th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, March 10, 2022, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 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!

From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: David Moss, Co-Founder, President and CTO of People Power Company (Part 2)

David Moss: We realized that one of the big barriers to entry is that people have to buy some thing before they realize the value. We got to thinking about how do we get past this barrier to create more of a freemium model of the IoT. In 2013, I came up with the concept that we could transform a spare smartphone into a free internet-connected security camera. We created this app called Presence which did just that.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Zimit Using Services to $10M

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

Among the biases of the Venture Capital industry that need to be categorically ignored, Bootstrapping Using Services happens to be on the top of the list. Zimit CEO James Cramer shares yet another fantastic textbook case study. Zimit was acquired by Workday in September 2021.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

James Cramer: I was born in Southern California. I grew up in a family that moved around a lot. My dad worked in the automotive industry, and so every few years we would change locations. That put me in Seattle, Southern California, the Carolinas, and then ultimately in Florida.

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Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo (Part 1)

Omri tells a wonderful story of validating and navigating his original FinTech idea in Israel and building a company in the US.

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?