categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
blackrock
Best of Bootstrapping: PhishMe was Bootstrapped Using Services First, Raised Money Later
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Following up on our ‘Bootstrapping Using Services‘ and ‘Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later’ case studies, here is the story of PhishMe, a cyber security company that has scaled nicely. Following my conversation with Co-founder Rohyt Belani in 2015, PhishMe was acquired by BlackRock in 2018. Sramana
Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What was the thought process behind your taking this one on and not growing the other one? Is this one a higher potential opportunity? Andy Gotshalk: Yes, it has a higher potential. There’s a greater market for this technology. Another reason is that it is part of my desire and philosophy of where do
Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 6)
Andy Gotshalk: We have good sales skills and we want to make sure we give constant pricing. But if there’s something that I can do to help make that researcher’s life easier, I do a lot of that on the front-end. I call it building collateral – doing things that, at the end of the
Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Why do these people want to join your company instead of doing research? What are you seeing as the driver for getting these people? Andy Gotshalk: I think it’s a personality type. Most PhD’s get their PhD and want to continue in academics and research, but there are people that want to have,
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Ensighten CEO Josh Manion (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: She’s also from the Midwest? Josh Manion: Yes, she’s from the Chicago area. We settled around Chicago in the western suburbs. I took a quick job with a network technology bar. That didn’t work out very well. That was nine months of craziness. Their business wasn’t doing well in the post dot-com world.
Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 4)
Andy Gotshalk: We started the business in 2008 and raised a little bit of money. Pretty soon, we became profitable. From 2008 to 2012, we grew our revenue from that million dollar starting point up close to $8 million or $9 million. Sramana Mitra: From $7 million starting point, you said? Andy Gotshalk: From $1 million.
Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 3)
Andy Gotshalk: This technology was invented at the University of Utah, so our company is in Salt Lake City because of that. There was another professor at the University of Utah who had a strong business mind, which you don’t find too often. He was heavily involved in developing new advanced parts of the same technology and
Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 2)
Andy Gotshalk: I also started taking some classes and thought about the idea of going to business school full-time. I never went back to business school so to this day, I still don’t have an MBA. I did take some key classes along the way, which provided a good foundation for me. The biggest thing
