Building a Mid-Market Cyber Security Company from Utah: Peter Bookman, CEO of Guard Dog (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In your case, the fact that you had a successful exit was helpful. Repeat founders always have an easier time raising money.

Peter Bookman: It does not hurt when your story can begin with, “I had a good horse and a good jockey. We won the race.” It does something else. You tend not to be alarmed, and you tend to be quite patient. It is fascinating that we got funding during that crisis.

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Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Oregon: Paresh Patel, CEO of PayRange (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’ve experienced the use case that you described. The gas station around the corner from me doesn’t have any digital payment option.

Paresh Patel: That was the problem. The machine only took cash.

Sramana Mitra: Do the gas station people attend these kinds of trade shows?‘

Building a Mid-Market Cyber Security Company from Utah: Peter Bookman, CEO of Guard Dog (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Did you work for SonicWall?

Peter Bookman: I did not. I transitioned out. I’m always excited about the next opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Peter Bookman: 2001.

Video FAQs

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Oregon: Paresh Patel, CEO of PayRange (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is your Ph.D. in?

Paresh Patel: It’s also in e-business and organization management.

Sramana Mitra: The vending machine company was yourself?

Paresh Patel: There were employees. We grew to about 25 employees.

Building a Mid-Market Cyber Security Company from Utah: Peter Bookman, CEO of Guard Dog (Part 1)

Peter is a startup veteran who is building a new Cyber Security company from Utah. The key insight to focus on in this story is how he found white space in the mid-market.

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?

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Oregon: Paresh Patel, CEO of PayRange (Part 1)

Paresh did a superb job of validating in a bootstrapped mode and then raising significant venture capital. However, he made some mistakes after the fund raise. Eventually, he course-corrected and has built a wonderful business without further infusion of capital. Excellent case study!

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?‘

Catching Up On Readings: CES 2022

This feature from Time magazine reviews the ten best gadgets at CES 2022 held virtually this year including innovations ranging from BMW’s color-changing SUV to Razer’s cutting-edge modular PC concept. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: If you tried to go into the Shopify marketplace with another e-commerce platform, that wouldn’t work. That was not an option. You were trying to build your own e-commerce platform.

Sadek Ali: Shopify is a long-tail play.

Sramana Mitra: Shopify, on many levels, is not the right marketplace for you.

Sadek Ali: Shopify and Shopify Plus are great products, but they’re not the best products for the mid-market.