Best of Bootstrapping: Entrepreneurial Couple Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to Millions

Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani bootstrapped to multi-million dollars in revenue selling a private label product before quitting their jobs. In this story, you also get to see the nuances of running successful (and not so successful) crowdfunding campaigns. Their very interesting journey and insights were shared with me in 2021. Sramana

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410th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Slava Rubin, Indiegogo

Slava Rubin, Founder of Indiegogo.com. Slava walked us through the trends on his crowdfunding platform.

Successfully Crowdfunding Design Driven Startups

By Guest Author Soren Petersen Design-driven startups are ideal for attracting funding on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Crowdfunder. However, competition for funds is fierce and only the top percentile receives significant funding. For example for Kickstarter “Design” projects only the top half percentile receive funding in excess of half a million and

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Is Crowdfunding a Train Wreck Waiting to Happen?

By guest author John Mullins Crowdfunding is all the rage today, with more than 50,000 projects funded, and more than $1 billion raised to date on Kickstarter alone. It takes many forms, of course, but the form I worry about is equity-based crowdfunding that is intended to start an ongoing entrepreneurial business, rather than to

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Crowdfunding Startups: Opportunities and Bottlenecks

There has been a bit of action for a while now in the crowdfunding world, and certain startups have been able to get themselves off the ground using the Kickstarter / Indiegogo style sites. By and large, these types of financings have gone to companies that are building physical products, digital games, etc. Fundings have

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Seed Capital Using Crowdfunding: Korstiaan Zandvliet, CEO of Symbid, Amsterdam (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: For investors with zero or limited experience in pre-seed or seed investment, what do you do to mitigate their risks? Of course, this is a highly risky business. How do you recommend or help your investors evaluate deals? Korstiaan Zandvliet: I think the second part of the interview addresses risk analysis and risk

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Future of Venture Funds: Innovation Coming

Venture funds, traditionally, have been extremely selective about their investments. Many firms barely make 5-10 investments a year, and only about 50 investments in the entire lifetime of a seven year fund. Lately, however, I am observing a different structure emerging in the early stage market. Instead of 5-10 investments a year, some investors are

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Seed Capital Using Crowdfunding: Korstiaan Zandvliet, CEO of Symbid, Amsterdam (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What are the core benefits that your community offers to the investors? Korstiaan Zandvliet: There are several motivations for investors to invest, so the benefits differ accordingly. What the community offers to all investors is engagement and information/updates about the plan. The entrepreneur provides the latter by answering questions, sending out emails, or

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