There are over six million students enrolled in Machine Learning courses on Udemy. The most daring will try to start their own businesses.
>>>If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Kish and Vanessa bootstrapped to multi-million dollars in revenue selling a private label product before quitting their job. In this story, you also get to see the nuances of running successful (and not so successful) crowdfunding campaigns. Very interesting journey and insights.
>>>Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, intellectuals have had to ask themselves, ‘Does Capitalism Still Work?’ I have explored this question for several years now, beginning with a seminal column I wrote for Forbes: Capitalism’s Fundamental Flaw. Two particular problems stand out.
>>>The DataStax-1Mby1M Fall 2021 Startup Challenge launched on September 9th. Here is the kick-off video with Chet Kapoor, CEO of DataStax, Ed Anuff, Chief Product Officer of DataStax discussing the program with me.
DataStax has significant enterprise customers that are using their Apache Cassandra-based database products to solve real world problems. They are putting these use cases out in the public domain for startups to build companies around. DataStax would be helping the startups on the technical and customer acquisition side, and 1Mby1M would be helping the startups on the positioning, mentoring, and financing side. $10,000 of grant money is also included in this challenge.
Let’s look at some of the use cases. They’re all related to the increasingly digital nature of most businesses. The ever-growing use of IoT is a good example. Verticals that manage many assets need real-time access to data for visibility and decision purposes. Organizations interacting directly with customers need to ensure they are engaged with the right customer, and they have a digital twin of the customer to drive services and experiences. These experiences and services are entirely digital and depend on real-time data access. Finally, organizations drive their intelligence and decisions by understanding and leveraging the increasingly vast amount of data they manage. Here are more details.
You want to do a startup. So, you need an idea to build around. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumer behavior in a major way. As we move through the virus-era, much more will likely change. With this realization, we ran a poll asking which topics readers would like me to cover and discuss. The overwhelming winner was startup ideas. So, after much thought, here are eight of my most recent startup ideas. My hope is to stimulate and help my fellow entrepreneurs catalyze these ideas into profitable businesses.
>>>In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Joe Speiser, Founder & CEO of LittleThings bootstrapped his first digital media/ad network business to $50 million in revenue and then sold it to private equity. Later he started a second business, an e-commerce company, that he bootstrapped for a year and then raised venture capital. His third business, LittleThings, is a spin-off within the second business that took him back to his digital media roots. Since our conversation in 2015, LittleThings was acquired by RockYou Media, an entertainment and media company aimed at millennials, in 2018.
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?
Joe Speiser: I’m from New York and I went to school in the city. I studied at the Columbia University. I’ve been doing all sorts of businesses from a very young age. I always had a passion for trying to start something from scratch and make a living. My dad is an entrepreneur. I used to work in his warehouse for most of my summers. It definitely taught me a lot watching my dad run a business. I don’t know if it’s something that’s taught or something that you’re just genetically predisposed to. I enjoy it so much.
During this week’s roundtable, we did a global romp through startup land.
Beem
First up we had Taha Jiwaji from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, pitch Beem, a terrific cPaaS company that is already doing over $1M in revenue.
OneNDF
Then we had Nitin Khandelwal from New Delhi, India, pitch OneNDF, a terrific FinTech company that is also doing over $1M in revenue, although not all of it through their FinTech platform yet.
Green Transport
Next Mohammed Tai and Jian Ming Lin pitching Green Transport, a concept stage idea. Mohammed is an intern in the 1Mby1M program.
You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here: