From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How did you generate inbound interest?

Aparna Dhinakaran: Cold emails. It works. I just told them that I’m building a company focused on ML observability. We spent months doing this. Every call we were on, we showed them our mocks. We asked them for feedback. At the end of these calls, people would say, “When is this going to be released?” We started to build up a list of alpha users.

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From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Who’s we?

Aparna Dhinakaran: I went through YC with my brother.

Sramana Mitra: What’s his background?

Aparna Dhinakaran: Also computer science. We jumped in and did YC. I recommend this to entrepreneurs. If you get into YC, it’s absolutely worth it. For it is for a first-time entrepreneur, there are two things that you need to focus on. One is building the product and then selling the product. They just focus on how do you remove every other noise. That’s the focus of that entire program.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: One of the trends that we see in the Indian small funds is that some of them are exiting their investments into the Series C or Series D. Is that something you are doing?

Deepak Gupta: That is certainly a path for us. Unless we keep investing substantially in the later rounds, it doesn’t make sense to keep holding a position because you do get diluted. We have raised funds from domestic investors who have a shorter lifecycle view on investments.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Niche E-Commerce Company Modded Euros

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

This conversation with Modded Euros Co-founder Sean Dawes from 2019 is a comprehensive discussion on how to bootstrap a niche e-commerce venture with a lean team and effective use of inventory financing. You can listen to the podcast interview here and watch the interview here:

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?

Sean Dawes: I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I haven’t gone too far away from my hometown as my company is based out of West Chester, Pennsylvania, which is 20 or 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia.

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Thursday, February 17 – 564th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 564th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, February 17, 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: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So did you quit Uber?

Aparna Dhinakaran: The reason I left Uber was to go to a PhD program. No one in my family had ever gone through higher education. When I had applied to Uber, I had an offer from a PhD program in Computer Vision. I had a ton of debt, so I had to first go to work for a couple of years. I’m really glad I did because nothing beats real-world experience. I left Uber to do a PhD at Cornell.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures (Part 1)

Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures, discusses his fund’s pre-seed and seed funding strategy for Indian startups.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself as well as WEH Ventures.

Deepak Gupta: I had been part of the venture ecosystem over the last 20 years off and on. In the last six or seven years, I have been running a fund called WEH Ventures. We are now on our second fund. We do pre-seed to seed investments which are primarily focused on the Indian market. We have a few companies that are facing overseas. We are fairly sector-agnostic.

From Developer to Successful Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Aparna Dhinakaran, Co-Founder, CPO of Arize (Part 1)

We have a huge audience of developers, engineers, and programmers who want to transition to becoming successful entrepreneurs.

This conversation explores the journey of such a developer. Fantastic story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? What kind of circumstances?