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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
Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 4)
Sergio Furio: We actually ended up doing exactly what we were seeing at that point, but there were too many question marks. We raised money from a couple of seed funds – one from Brazil and another from the Czech Republic. That was 25% of the round. Another 50% was from a set of 8
Scaling an Energy Management Venture: Martin Manniche, CEO of Greenwave Systems (Part 2)
Martin Manniche: In a very short period of time, I figured out that I really liked understanding the technology and the software. I picked it off fairly quickly. When I was out delivering these products, every time I would sell them something. I started, together with my brother, a component distribution company for distributing memory,
Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: While you were experimenting with lead generation and doing it on a shoestring experimentation mode, what kind of revenue level did you reach with that? Was that something that you used to bootstrap the new idea? Sergio Furio: The reason why we were doing lead generation at that point was that it was
Scaling an Energy Management Venture: Martin Manniche, CEO of Greenwave Systems (Part 1)
Martin is a serial entrepreneur with nine startups under his belt. This story traces his journey from Copenhagen to California with a focus on his latest venture Greenwave that has already scaled to over $50 million in revenue. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were
Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: You were finding people online who were looking for loans and connecting them to financial institutions. Sergio Furio: At that point, it was even broader. We were looking for people looking for financial services in general. We were offering insurance, credit cards, and credit. We were capturing some basic information and doing some
Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 1)
Companies are starting to scale in Latin America. In this story, we bring you a FinTech company’s journey from its bootstrapped beginnings to validation, venture financing, and scaling. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Sergio
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: What did you price the Ecwid product at? Ruslan Fazlyev: The model back then was one free plan and one paid plan at $70. The pricing model is a bit different now. Sramana Mitra: $70 a month? Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes, it’s different now. Now we have premium offerings. There are paid plans at $15,
Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: You wanted to set the company for exit. Ruslan Fazlyev: Yes. Sramana Mitra: Where did you go to look for financing? Ruslan Fazlyev: I never really looked proactively for financing. The way it worked is, Ecwid was named as the hottest technology company in Russia after winning this competition by Google and Forbes in