Best of Bootstrapping: Happy Grasshopper CEO Dan Stewart Bootstrapped to Inflection

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

Dan Stewart was a 1Mby1M entrepreneur when we spoke in 2017. Read how he navigated his way to an inflection point that brought him to the cusp of 4x growth.

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?

Dan Stewart: My family moved around quite a lot as I was growing up. I rarely stayed in a school for more than a year. That took me from West Virginia and Chicago, down to Florida.

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: AfterShip CEO Andrew Chan (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Which platform was the first one that you started getting traction on?

Andrew Chan: Shopify and eBay as well.

Sramana Mitra: Just to get a feel for this strategy, what you’re describing is a strategy that we have picked up on from various case studies that we have covered. We call it Bootstrapping by Piggybacking on Platforms. It’s a strategy of going to market that is working very well for a lot of small startups. As you pointed out, you’re going to market without a sales team. You are able to go to market by riding on somebody else’s marketing channel.

Bootstrapping Using Services to a Fabulous Exit from Ohio: Gathi Analytics CEO Vamsi Kora (Part 3)

Vamsi Kora: We decided to focus on our core strength, which is leveraging platforms and products that exist in the marketplace and leverage our services that we built so far, keep maturing them, and provide these as accelerators. In that sense, this is more akin to the business approach of Palantir.

You bring two critical aspects. You bring industry expertise and become a true partner for a CIO, Chief Data Officer, and Chief Digital Officer. You augment that with these accelerators that we built that help them think about the right combination of tools for them and argue why specific set of tools are needed or not needed.

Video FAQs

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: AfterShip CEO Andrew Chan (Part 1)

Andrew has built AfterShip by heavily leveraging the e-commerce Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Marketplaces. Read on for more.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as AfterShip.

Thursday, December 16 – 557th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 557th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, December 16, 2021, 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 Using Services to a Fabulous Exit from Ohio: Gathi Analytics CEO Vamsi Kora (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay with Nationwide?

Vamsi Kora: I stayed until 2007. I became a full-time employee in an initial management position. Then in 2007, I moved across town to join JP Morgan. JP Morgan bought Bank One. I kept on growing in my career rapidly. I felt that my two interests are enterprise data and building impactful global teams. That aligned very well with the opportunities I got at Chase. That helped me hone my skills.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay there?

Tech Workers are NOT Quitting. They are Starting Up.

Two articles this week attempt to demystify the myth.

In The Economist, the phenomenon is explained thus:

The term is elastic, but in essence it makes the proposition that the pandemic has provoked a cultural shift in which workers reassess their priorities. People in low-status jobs will no longer put up with bad pay or poor conditions, while white-collar types scoff at the idea of working long hours. Some people have become lazier or feel more entitled; others want to try something new, or desire money less because they have come to appreciate the joys of a simpler life. This is, supposedly, leading to a tsunami of resignations and dropouts. There is just one catch: the theory has little hard evidence to support it.

556th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Seong Kim, Chegg

Seong Kim, Corporate Strategy & Development for Chegg Inc., discusses exit strategy within EdTech.

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