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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
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
Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What year did you guys come together to start LoopUp? Michael Hughes: We first met each other from 1995 to 1997 at Stanford. I had this fellowship, which meant that I had to go back to the UK. I went back for about nine months and then moved back out to California. I then joined
From Iran to Stanford to Silicon Valley Entrepreneur: Farnaz Ronaghi, Co-Founder and CTO of NovoEd (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Your hypothesis was that you’re going to be selling to the corporate learning environment, did that pan out? Farnaz Ronaghi: It’s too early to say if it has panned out completely, but it has. The mix of our customers in the past two years has mainly been universities. Then there are lots of