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.

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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?

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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.

January 13 – 559th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 559th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, January 13, 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!

Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You had a diverse set of e-commerce platforms that were in that portfolio.

Sadek Ali: That’s correct. We didn’t really know what the platform was. I picked up technologies my entire life. If you understand how e-commerce works, then you know the operational side of it that they’re looking for. We did that and we said, “Let’s make sure our contracts are easy. Let’s make sure we have happy customers and let’s make sure we have a happy culture in this little group of three.”

They liked our hands-on approach and they liked being able to have an open and honest conversation about e-commerce. We got our three customers monetized right away. For two customers, it took us two years. We still had the contract for them, but they wouldn’t pay us a penny. We had to be persistent because we wanted that conversation with them.