Best of Bootstrapping: From Laid-Off Engineer to Startup Co-founder and Exit

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Aspera Co-founder Michelle Munson started the company she began after being laid off. Aspera was her realization that she could not only control her own career path, but also create jobs for other people in a culture she established. I hope this conversation from 2009

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Best of Bootstrapping: From Laid-off Engineer to Successful Startup Co-founder

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Michelle Munson is Co-founder of Aspera, a company she began after being laid off. Aspera was her realization that she could not only control her own career path, but also create jobs for other people in a culture she established. I hope this conversation from 2009

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Best of Bootstrapping: From Laid-off Engineer to Successful Startup CEO

Michelle Munson was CEO and Co-founder of Aspera, a company she began after being laid off. Aspera was her realization that she could not only control her own career path but also create jobs for other people in a culture she established. This story is great inspiration for the thousands who have been let go

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From Laid-off Engineer To Successful Startup CEO: Michelle Munson of Aspera (Part 7)

SM: Since you have set up the company as an equity-based structure, you are going to have to exit it. If you were going to keep it you would have needed a different structure. MM: Definitely. We would like to sell the company as a strategic acquisition to a company that can make use of

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From Laid-off Engineer To Successful Startup CEO: Michelle Munson of Aspera (Part 6)

SM: What was your ultimate design goal? MM: The first problem we aimed to solve was how to make a re-transmission machine, a control system that retransmits data at a rate that matches the channel capacity for any packet loss rate over the channel and any delay. That was our design goal.

From Laid-off Engineer To Successful Startup CEO: Michelle Munson of Aspera (Part 5)

SM: You were able to find a starting point in the open source community? MM: I found a good model from a different domain that we experimented with, and it worked well. That was the point at which we started making the protocol.

From Laid-off Engineer To Successful Startup CEO: Michelle Munson of Aspera (Part 4)

SM: What was the problem the digital media companies were facing that you wanted to solve? MM: I knew it was a problem in application layer networking, which was something I had always had an interest in. I liked the theoretical underpinnings of it. I could see there was a layer which was unsolved.

From Laid-off Engineer To Successful Startup CEO: Michelle Munson of Aspera (Part 3)

SM: Concepts coming before their time happens a lot here in Silicon Valley. MM: It sure does. However, it was my first real experience in a startup with a peer group I was excited about. Partly because of my inquisitive nature, they used to send me out to customers as well. I gained a lot

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