Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you make this way – from advertising? Ankush Sabharwal: It’s more money than we would have made through subscription. Sramana Mitra: Really? Ankush Sabharwal: There are four million users on the website and more in the app every day. Sramana Mitra: Traffic volume was very large. You just created

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Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You were working at Ultisource when you negotiated with Indian Railways? Ankush Sabharwal: Yes. In the appraisal cycle when I was about to quit the company, I got the highest rating. I was Group Manager that time. When you’re the manager’s manager, you hardly get the highest rating in appraisals.

Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Going back to 2016, there were these platform providers but there were also these other startups that had full applications. Where was the gap? What is the justification of starting CoRover at that point? Ankush Sabharwal: There were two sets of companies. One was the platform companies and the other is the implementation

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Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the concept? What were you going to do? How did you come up with that concept? Ankush Sabharwal: The product suites that these banks have are the same. They have savings accounts, checking accounts, and current accounts. I have not seen very innovative products from banks. The functional products are the

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Bootstrapping an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck: Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover (Part 1)

It took Ankush and his cofounders two years to launch their first customer, The Indian Railways. During this time, the founders held on to their jobs, diligently fulfilling their responsibilities while also pursuing their dreams. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and

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Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk to me about the competition? There is a whole bunch of players in the EdTech space who also cater to the same customers that you are interested in. Pluralsight is a very good example. Who else do you consider as a competitor? Ben Spring: There are a couple of labs

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Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How many enterprise customers do you have right now? Ben Spring: Well over a hundred. We’ve been super fortunate to onboard Fortune 500 companies, lots of governments, lots of schools, and colleges. We’ve done some really rewarding work with the education of Scotland to provide training to 14 and 15-year-olds to break into

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Student Developers Bootstrapping with a Paycheck, Then Growing to a Million Users: Ben Spring, CEO of TryHackMe (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was happening with the business? Were the conversation rates increasing? Was the number of users increasing and how? Ben Spring: It was completely organic. We were incredibly lucky. It was just word-of-mouth. We really tried to make a great user experience and understand the user’s problem. At the time, I was constantly

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