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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
Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: The first year of being in the market was in 2012? Hannu Verkasalo: 2013 was when we started building the product. End of 2014 was when we launched the product. Now we have had two full years in the market. Sramana Mitra: When did Cisco come on board? Hannu Verkasalo: They came on
Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Let’s take this step by step. You had this conversation with Facebook and it triggered a thought in your mind in 2012. Hannu Verkasalo: Yes. Sramana Mitra: How did you get the company off the ground? You had capital, so you could start it on your own. Hannu Verkasalo: That’s right. I put
From Iran to Stanford to Silicon Valley Entrepreneur: Farnaz Ronaghi, Co-Founder and CTO of NovoEd (Part 1)
Donald Trump wants to restrict immigrants, especially those from Muslim countries, and especially from Iran. Well, read this Iranian entrepreneur’s story. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and in what kind of background? Farnaz Ronaghi: I was born in Tehran, Iran. I
Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: There are lots of lead customers, which is really important for a startup. Hannu Verkasalo: You’re right. Let’s talk about the incident on mobile. Many of these companies including Google and Facebook want to support new innovations and new ideas. In many cases, they use you because they want to bring something new
Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Eventually, where did you raise money from? Allan Wille: The Series A lead was from Canada. That was from OMERS. OMERS, of course, has a big history with Hootsuite and Shopify. They know that space very well. Our seed round had both Canadian and US investors. I don’t know if you know Maya
Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How many investors did you have and how much money did you raise? Hannu Verkasalo: We raised $2 million. Sramana Mitra: From investors in Finland? Hannu Verkasalo: Yes, we had two investors from Finland and a couple of angels. I put in quite a bit of money. Knowing what I know now and
Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: By the time you found your product-market fit, there were other players in the market in the visualization space like Tableau. What did you experience from a competitive challenge point of view? Allan Wille: We actually saw relatively little competition. That’s because we were going after small and midsize companies. Even today, the business
Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: The product idea was based on what you were doing for Nokia and what you wanted to bring for the other mobile operators, right? Hannu Verkasalu: Exactly. Sramana Mitra: This is now the post-iPhone era. Hannu Verkasalu: Yes. Now more and more companies were interested in mobile being a medium for content and
