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
Bootstrapping B:B:C Style
I promised B:C entrepreneurs that if I saw any silver bullet that might help you bootstrap your ventures and access consumers quickly, I will be sure to flag you. Well, here’s one. Last week, I spoke with Rearden Commerce, a company I have covered before. They showed me an implementation of restaurant reservation service OpenTable,
Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (Part 7)
Sridhar’s thesis around Zoho is to ride on top of the market awareness already created by Salesforce.com, Webex and others around On-Demand / SaaS delivery models for business applications like the Office Suite, CRM, Web Conferencing, Project Management, etc. and simply do a dramatic undercutting based on price. He insists that the amount of Sales
Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (Part 6)
Here we begin to explore the current status of Zoho a bit further. Impressive numbers considering there has been no advertising campaigns conducted. The business model is simple – let users try the service for free, when they are comfortable they will migrate over. Afterwards, they compete based on pricing (less than 20% of the
Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (Part 5)
Interesting comparisons here by Sridhar between the Zoho CRM and the SalesForce CRM products; while SalesForce has a high focus on sales teams (and one of the best telesales teams anywhere in the world), Zoho is simply looking to take a competitive advantage in terms of pricing. According to Sridhar this shows in the construct
Entrepreneurship Case Studies
You have read many of my interviews on this blog. Here’s a synthesis of some of the case studies I have done, in an interview format. These differ slightly from the series that I have titled Role Model Interviews, since in this series, I go into the company and its strategy, market, financing, etc. in
Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (Part 4)
AdventNet provides a safety zone from which to launch Zoho, which is why I was looking to gain an understanding of the revenue and cash position of the company. While competition will be stiff from Google and Microsoft, as well as other CRM and group meeting companies, Zoho seems to have a unique philosophy of
Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (Part 3)
During the downturn after the bubble burst, many companies took significant hits. Here, it is revealing to notice there was really only one tough year for Adventnet, which could actually be described as an R&D year. That could have taken place anytime in the company’s history. The bubble burst did not destroy the company, they
Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (Part 2)
Sridhar’s experience in bootstrapping is something to learn from, especially for entrepreneurs in India, who keep complaining about the lack of funding availability from venture sources. Along the way, he weathered many storms, as all good entrepreneurs learn to do. SM: How did you fund your early initiative? SV: It was all bootstrapped. My wife