1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Steven Mitzenmacher, Rackspace Technology (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If we want to send you deals to look at, you are a perfectly good point?

Steven Mitzenmacher: Absolutely. Our mandate is to be knowledgeable enough that we can be a quick filter. Quick no’s are better than long maybe’s. We can help you intelligently navigate the organization in terms of where your opportunities are.

Sramana Mitra: I know you’ve recently switched to Rackspace. Have you created this map already? Do you have a sense of what is going to be your focus?

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Sramana Mitra: You’re offering a free data model to your first client. That’s how you get access to the training data.

Martin Neale: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: Give me a little bit of color on the kind of data you were able to access on which you’ve trained the model. What kind of heuristics does the model contain?

Best of Bootstrapping: Abacus Group Founder Bootstrapped a Virtualization Services Company

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

Abacus Group Founder CEO Chris Grandi has significant domain knowledge in the hedge fund industry. When we spoke in 2015, he had self-financed a successful company offering to secure virtualization services to the segment with high service levels.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Chris Grandi: I was born and raised on the East Coast outside of Washington DC, and I grew up in suburban Maryland. For university, I went to the West Coast and attended UCLA. I then continued on to graduate work. I got my MBA from Harvard Business School. I moved out to San Francisco, California where I’ve been for approximately 20 years.

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Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Steven Mitzenmacher, Rackspace Technology (Part 2)

Steven Mitzenmacher: The next function is a capability deal. That’s not just about your existing core and enhancing it; it’s about adding a new Lego brick to your core. That might be your bolt-on acquisition. In that case, it’s augmenting a new product or service offering that can add technology or features to your existing stack as an adjacency. It’s highly complementary to your existing portfolio. It’s an extension, but it’s not a radical departure from what you do. It’s a similar selling motion but with a new value proposition or new use cases.

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Martin Neale, CEO of ICS (Part 1)

Martin has built his AI startup within the Microsoft ecosystem. He shares interesting perspectives on how to leverage Microsoft.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself as well ICS.

Martin Neale: I’m the CEO of ICS AI. 

Thursday, October 21 – 550th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 550th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, October 21, 2021, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 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!

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Steven Mitzenmacher, Rackspace Technology (Part 1)

Steven Mitzenmacher, SVP of Corporate Development at Rackspace Technology, discusses the Buy-side thought process on Exit Strategy.

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ohad Maislish, CEO of env0 (Part 2)

Ohad Maislish: Another use case is governance. Not every code should be executed. Some code can be very dangerous and expensive. That’s where you see Policy-as-a-Code. We see a lot of open policy agents (OPA) used to protect programmatic deployments before they happen. You can write policies that will prevent your organization from the wrong deployment. That’s like the unit test model for Infrastructure-as-a-Code.