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Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: What kind of B2C traction were you experiencing at this point? Matt MacInnis: Some titles performed very well. I should say that at some point in 2012, we also started doing non-academic content. Inkling is not an easy story to tell because we’ve adapted a lot. Sramana Mitra: That’s okay. That is exactly
Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Facebook is unique in its targeting capabilities. Talk about how you took advantage of that. What was the segment you were going after? What segment was converting for you? What did you learn about these nuances of positioning? Nevin Shetty: As a wedding registry, we targeted people who were engaged. Sramana Mitra: The
Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What about the business model? Your hypothesis at that point was that you were going to digitize these textbooks, you were going to do the customer acquisition on the B2C side, and you were going to take a commission off that sale. What was the business model assumption with the publishers? Matt MacInnis:
Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: One clarification, both you and Liz kept your jobs while you were raising this convertible note round. For the whole time? Nevin Shetty: Yes. That’s the amazing part. It was just the two of us working part-time. From across the nation, Lizzie had moved at this point. Sramana Mitra: Where is she? Nevin
Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How did they know about your software? Matt MacInnis: We found out later that they had discovered Inkling through a publisher who had gotten a job at Starbucks and looked at what Starbucks was doing every quarter by shipping binders out to their district managers. We were a software platform that lets you
Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Did you go with offshore or onshore? Nevin Shetty: Since it’s very high-touch front-end stuff, we wanted someone we could meet with. We chose a dev shop in New York. They had done e-commerce before. Frankly, they just had very good project management. We were able to talk with them and think through
Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: This thinking behind your startup is happening while you were still at Apple? Matt MacInnis: For probably six or nine months, we explored and brainstormed whether there was a viable business here. Sramana Mitra: Your observation that the future of textbooks was not just digitization of what already existed was the impetus to think
Bootstrapping With a Paycheck to Techstars: Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: This is a big challenge. We do have entrepreneurs who are non-technical. Let me ask you one question before you go to the development portion. Before launching into this direction with your startup, you must have done some level of comparative analysis. Talk to me a little bit about what you unearthed in