Roundtable Recap: April 30 – Billion Dollar Unicorns with Therese Tucker, CEO of BlackLine

During today’s roundtable, we celebrated the launch of my book, Billion Dollar Unicorns, with Therese Tucker, Founder and CEO of BlackLine. Therese is a very successful female entrepreneur who followed our core philosophy of bootstrap first, raise money later. When I first met her in 2009, her company was in the $10 million revenue range.

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Were you still in Gent? Bruno Lowagie: I was still in Gent and we’re still in Gent. In 2009, the list was finished and we didn’t find any new customers. We then made a bold move. We changed the old version of iText from the LGPL/MGPL to the AGPL. That’s a more viral license.

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 4)

Bruno Lowagie: I asked what we can do to solve this. IBM said, “We have to do it the hard way.” Actuate was a company under the Eclipse umbrella. They entered a research agreement with Gent University. The deliverable was an IP overview. During 2007, I went to the university to do my job but as soon

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257th Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Starting NOW, Live Tweeting By @1Mby1M

Today’s 257th FREE online 1M/1M roundtable for entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, April 30, at 8:00 a.m. PST/11:00 a.m. EST/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join.

Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was this something that you created on the side? It was your own intellectual property. Bruno Lowagie: Yes. Sramana Mitra: This was in 2000? Bruno Lowagie: Yes. Sramana Mitra: What does that first release mean? Did you give it to the open source? Bruno Lowagie: I released it initially in LGPL library but then a

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A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Bhavin Parikh and his now departed co-founder Hansoo Lee have built Magoosh with textbook diligence and great discipline. Along the way, Hansoo died of lung cancer, a tragedy that hangs over the company both as misfortune and as inspiration. Read this wonderful story of young Berkeley

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Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 1)

Bruno has bootstrapped a highly profitable company from Belgium. Now what? Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Bruno Lowagie: I’m from Belgium. Sramana Mitra: I’m married to a Belgian. Were you born and raised in Belgium? Bruno Lowagie: Yes, I was born in Ypres, which is in the west of Flanders. I lived there until

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Bootstrapping Using Services From Colorado: InteliSecure CTO Chuck Bloomquist (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is your plan going forward? You’re about $16 million. The market has appetite for what you bring to the table. Is it just basically doing more of the same thing? Is that an accurate summary of what your game plan is? Chuck Bloomquist: I definitely want to continue and expand in different

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