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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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- The Future: End of Capitalism
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Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft (Part 1)
This is a wonderful story of a Czech entrepreneur, who at 22, at a time when his country was far from ready to support entrepreneurs, struggled through immense odds and has built a global business. Read on for inspiration and excellent lessons from the trenches. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your
Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Where are you now? What are the metrics of 2016? Michael Hughes: We went public in the summer of 2016 on the London Stock Exchange. Our revenue for 2016 is about £12.8 million. We will actually be releasing our 2016 results in a couple of weeks. We have to do an announcement that
Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Explain the business model a bit. Secondly, describe the competitive landscape. Who or what are you competing against and how? Michael Hughes: We built up all these systems because we didn’t have any money and it was all we could do. The business model that we followed is very much the same business
Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: This journey of getting to profitability happened on a total of about $2.5 million? Michael Hughes: All in all, it was a little bit more than that. It would probably be about $4 million. I would need to go and check. Sramana Mitra: Now we are in 2010? Michael Hughes: Yes. We’ve got
Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Timeline-wise, from when you started with the initial investment and went through these pivots, how much time has passed? Michael Hughes: We started in 2003. We realized we were running out of time in late 2005. We pivoted in 2006. We started selling with this Blackberry bit. We had very strong growth in
From Iran to Stanford to Silicon Valley Entrepreneur: Farnaz Ronaghi, Co-Founder and CTO of NovoEd (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Can you anchor this for us with some of your business metrics? How many customers do you have now? Farnaz Ronaghi: I think we have around 50. Sramana Mitra: What is the average deal size that you have now stabilized on? Farnaz Ronaghi: It varies quite a bit. We still get into conversations
Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How much money did you raise from this round? It sounds like it was a friends and family angels round. Michael Hughes: It was about $400,000. Sramana Mitra: What did you tell these people who invested that first $400,000? Michael Hughes: We used to be called Ring2 Communications back then. The original idea
From Iran to Stanford to Silicon Valley Entrepreneur: Farnaz Ronaghi, Co-Founder and CTO of NovoEd (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: When you go into corporate sales situations, whom do you see in deals? Farnaz Ronaghi: That’s an interesting question. I was telling you that we don’t exist as a tool in the corporate landscape. That’s really true. There’s another tool called Intrepid Learning that we sometimes run into. They are similar to us