Today’s 559th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, January 13, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup All are welcome!
Sramana Mitra: The form factor of your product was that you would just clip it on a retail machine? Paresh Patel: The design was remarkably simple. It almost works like a thumb drive. You just take the device and plug it into the machine. In three seconds, it could take that legacy machine and convert
Sramana Mitra: I’ve experienced the use case that you described. The gas station around the corner from me doesn’t have any digital payment option. Paresh Patel: That was the problem. The machine only took cash. Sramana Mitra: Do the gas station people attend these kinds of trade shows?‘
Sramana Mitra: What is your Ph.D. in? Paresh Patel: It’s also in e-business and organization management. Sramana Mitra: The vending machine company was yourself? Paresh Patel: There were employees. We grew to about 25 employees.
Paresh did a superb job of validating in a bootstrapped mode and then raising significant venture capital. However, he made some mistakes after the fund raise. Eventually, he course-corrected and has built a wonderful business without further infusion of capital. Excellent case study! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where
Sramana Mitra: If you tried to go into the Shopify marketplace with another e-commerce platform, that wouldn’t work. That was not an option. You were trying to build your own e-commerce platform. Sadek Ali: Shopify is a long-tail play. Sramana Mitra: Shopify, on many levels, is not the right marketplace for you. Sadek Ali: Shopify
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 559th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, January 13, 2022, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 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
Sramana Mitra: You had a diverse set of e-commerce platforms that were in that portfolio. Sadek Ali: That’s correct. We didn’t really know what the platform was. I picked up technologies my entire life. If you understand how e-commerce works, then you know the operational side of it that they’re looking for. We did that