March 3 – 566th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 566th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, March 3, 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!

Featured Videos

Roundtable Recap: February 24 – Further Discussions on Indian Venture Capital

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder of Mela Ventures, and former CEO of MindTree, discussing the Indian Venture ecosystem.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

>>>

Bootstrapping a Vertical CRM Product using Services: Cleverping CEO Haysam Ali (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Do you charge the brands?

Haysam Ali: No, they charge me. They invest resources and we invest resources on our side to make sure that we can accomplish the integration. At the end of the day, both sides generate revenue by using the CRM.

Sramana Mitra: How many of these mom-and-pops are out there that you are selling this to?

Haysam Ali: There are more than 30,000.

Video FAQs

565th Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 565th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, February 24, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where did the inbound interest come from? What countries?

Juha Lehtonen: We currently have clients in 17 countries. We get contacts from the Baltics, UK, Switzerland, and the Middle East.

Sramana Mitra: They come to you and you sell through online touchpoints. You don’t have to go visit people.

Juha Lehtonen: Yes.

Bootstrapping a Vertical CRM Product using Services: Cleverping CEO Haysam Ali (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Was there any technology element to what you were providing?

Haysam Ali: Not at first. While providing consulting services, we were able to build a CRM that provides intelligence into the data that we collect for them. That was then used to get other clients. Telefonica was the main case that opened the door to Frontier. We became one of the biggest players of Frontier in the US. We won a prize on the number of quality customers. That prize led us to other customers.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped to $5M First, Raised Money Later

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

CEO Josh Millet had bootstrapped Criteria to almost $5 million in revenue before raising funding.

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?

Josh Millet: I was born in Toronto, Canada. I have dual citizenship of US and Canada. I came to the States for school 20 years ago and have been here ever since.

>>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from Helsinki: Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: All your early customers were in Finland?

Juha Lehtonen: Yes, the early customers were local. Once we were up and running, it took us about a year and a half to launch the product. We did it very gradually. Around 2008, we heard that there was a couple of Swedish guys in sales who were setting up their company in Sweden.

Their goal was to find two or three software products that they wanted to represent. We were able to get started with them. We were among those three software that they represented in Sweden. That was the beginning of a little bit of the international market.