Building a European EdTech Unicorn from Vienna, Austria: Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: For those three years, you ran this site of letting students ask questions and answering those questions? Felix Ohswald: Yes. Sramana Mitra: Was there financing involved? Felix Ohswald: Yes, we raised about €3 million. Sramana Mitra: From whom?

Building a European EdTech Unicorn from Vienna, Austria: Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent (Part 1)

This is a terrific story of a European EdTech venture that has raised $600 million and is scaling extremely well after three years of not finding a monetization model. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Bootstrapping Using Services and Piggybacking from Australia: StoreConnect CEO Mikel Lindsaar (Part 1)

Mikel has built a services company in Australia and spawned six SaaS products out of it. One of them, StoreConnect, is a terrific Bootstrapping by Piggybacking story on top of Salesforce.com. He has exited four of the apps and expects to grow StoreConnect to $100M+ in revenue. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning

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Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You had to develop a new methodology of online learning that would capture some of the nuances of your physical learning and translate that into a methodology that would work online. Manan Khurma: Not some nuances, but all nuances. Lots of custom development work had to be done. It took us two years

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Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The $4 million round got you the teacher scaling process. In that advertising process, what did you learn? What were you advertising for? Manan Khurma: We were looking for women. That was the initial set that worked for us. At that point, our teacher base was almost entirely women. Because we were home-based

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Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How were the teachers acquiring students from the neighborhood? Manan Khurma: Mostly the teachers were relying on their personal networks. Sramana Mitra: Word-of-mouth. Manan Khurma: Yes, or you go to your complex and do an event. It was mostly organic stuff. This is how we grew on the demand side for the first

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Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is the sweet sauce of your curriculum? In the market, we have Khan Academy. There’s a lot of curriculum out there. What is it that you bring to the table in your methodology that is different? Manan Khurma: The biggest underlying trait is what we call learning by reasoning, which is understanding

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Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Why would another test prep player buy this business if you were not going to come with it? Manan Khurma: We spent a little bit of time there. We essentially managed to build a good brand. We had a lot of good curriculum and study materials. I didn’t start the next business right

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