Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Devin Johnson, CEO of FirstMile (Part 1)

Logistics is becoming a key battleground for e-commerce companies, especially with Amazon setting a sky-high bar. Devin discusses the trends and where his company adds value.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to FirstMile and yourself.

Devin Johnson: I’m the Founder and CEO of FirstMile. We’re based out of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sramana Mitra: What is FirstMile’s business? >>>

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Ashish Sharma, Principal at Axtria (Part 1)

Ashish focuses on Big Data in Life Sciences.

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

Ashish Sharma: Thanks for the opportunity. Axtria is a global Big Data analytics company. Our main focus is around the life sciences and financial services industries. In those two focus areas, we empower them to optimize their business strategies or their investments by optimizing their investment around both Big Data and advanced analytics. >>>

Are You Facing Layoffs? Want to Start Your Own Business?

Tech companies have announced 200,000 layoffs.

Are you facing layoffs? Want to start off on your own?

Watch this inspiring 1 minute 32 seconds video:

For more details, read From Laid-off Engineer To Successful Startup CEO: Michelle Munson of Aspera.

Start by taking our free, one-hour Bootstrapping Course. Checkout our Udemy courses for tech entrepreneurs, which are frequently discounted. Come talk to me to brainstorm, strategize, tackle roadblocks, and weigh your options.

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352nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Ron Heinz, Signal Peak Ventures

Ron Heinz, Founder and Managing Director at Signal Peak Ventures, a venture firm operating mostly in the Rocky Mountain corridor, discusses what’s happening in Utah, as well as Colorado and Arizona. We’ve covered a number of companies from that area including Pluralsight, InsideSales, Steals.com, Ping Identity, and InfusionSoft. Today there are over a thousand funded startups in those geographies. Bootstrapping runs heavy in the startup culture of the region.

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231st 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Tod Francis, Shasta Ventures

Tod Francis, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, starts with a discussion on the history of retail, all the way from shoe stores, to departmental stores, and back to specialty retail. This is followed by a similar overview of the history of e-commerce ranging from Amazon’s strategy to how specialty retail is translating into niche e-commerce, and how Tod is looking at investments in the category.

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250th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Scott Sandell, NEA

Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA, is one of NEA’s star investors. He has been named to the Forbes Midas list every year since 2007, and has been involved with eight Unicorn companies including Salesforce.com, Workday, Webex, Tableau, and others. Scott discusses, specifically, Webex and Tableau in quite a bit of depth. In both companies, the scrappy, capital-efficient management of those businesses were striking!

Among Silicon Valley’s venture firms, NEA holds a special place in my own entrepreneurial journey, being the first VC firm that I successfully raised funding from. Oddly, and we discuss this, at the time in the late nineties, the fact that my company was doing product development in India was considered unacceptable. Of course, all that changed in due course, and today India is firmly established on the startup map, as are China, Europe, and many other nations. NEA was an early adopter of the global entrepreneurship trend, and has offices in India and China. They also invest elsewhere in the world, where they don’t have offices.

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240th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Shomit Ghose, Onset Ventures

Shomit Ghose, Partner at Onset Ventures, is also a veteran startup executive with multiple IPOs under his belt. He highlights the fact that 70,000 ventures received angel funding in 2014, but the number of companies receiving venture funding remains constant year over year at about 1,000 per year. Focusing on building value is of paramount importance, so that you can validate and prove your value proposition.

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282nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Susan Mason, Aligned Partners

Susan Mason, General Partner at Aligned Ventures, talks about the dysfunctions of the broader venture capital model, and what her firm is doing to address those. Excellent conversation, please listen.

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