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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 a Two-Sided Marketplace to $10M: Sal Akbani, CEO of Gateway Classic Cars (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What did you do to wipe the initial money out? How did you use that money? Sal Akbani: You have real estate expenses because you need a place to store cars. You had to have the money to market those cars. Sramana Mitra: Were you buying cars? Were you actually holding on to
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bonanza Co-Founder Mark Dorsey (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Bonanza has scaled to over $75 million in revenue with just $1 million in funding. It was bootstrapped for several years before a penny of external financing was raised. Amazingly crisp execution. A must-read story of how a two-sided marketplace was masterfully seeded and scaled. Sramana
Bootstrapping a Two-Sided Marketplace to $10M: Sal Akbani, CEO of Gateway Classic Cars (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Sal has bootstrapped Gateway Classic Cars to over $10 million in revenue. Another great story of how a two-sided marketplace was masterfully seeded and scaled in a niche market. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were
Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: You have, yourself, generated a huge amount of capital at this point through a couple of exits. You had an all-cash exit of $160 million plus a $900 million exit. That’s a lot of cash. You don’t really need to go anywhere for cash. You have plenty of cash. Culturally and strategically, in
Scaling a Fast Growth, Venture-Funded Company: Rafael Sweary, Co-Founder and President of WalkMe (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What are you seeing now? Where to from here? You have raised almost $100 million worth of financing. You have very good metrics. You’re scaling nicely. Do you see an IPO soon? Rafael Sweary: Not soon. I think an IPO is a very likely scenario, but the timing of an IPO is something
Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Any other businesses that you want to talk about? Bhavin Turakhia: After that, I started two more — Flock and Zeta. Flock is in the enterprise and team messaging space, and Zeta is in the payment space. I started Zeta with a co-founder in India, and the business is currently largely managed by
Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: What scale did you get to with that business before you exited? Bhavin Turakhia: In the public domain, we exited that business at a valuation of $900 million to this consortium of investors in a public company in China. This happened in August of 2016. It was the third largest ad tech deal
Scaling a Fast Growth, Venture-Funded Company: Rafael Sweary, Co-Founder and President of WalkMe (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: What I’m hearing is that you came to the conclusion that you wanted to cater to large enterprises. Based on what you were describing, that was my first instinct to hear that this needs to be an enterprise sale. I was actually surprised that you were going the route of selling online. It
