categories
HOT TOPICS
- 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 Big Data Venture: Hiro Yoshikawa, CEO of Treasure Data (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: As an anecdote, I was at MIT in the mid 90’s. Richard Stallman was there. He was one of the first advocates of open source. This was 10 years before the timeframe that you’re talking about. Hiro Yoshikawa: That’s true. I could likely become the firsthand witness that Linux took to mainstream. 15
Building a Big Data Venture: Hiro Yoshikawa, CEO of Treasure Data (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. A very interesting story of a big data infrastructure management startup. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Hiro Yoshikawa: I am a native Japanese. I was
Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Where are you today? What are the metrics of the business that you would like to share? Benny De-Kalo: I cannot share all the information, but I can tell you that we’re growing very fast. We have over 80,000 items and their total worth is over $280 million. We have almost 5,000 buyers
Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: What was the inflection point of the business? When you raised A, you had a million in revenue but you didn’t have a full indication of how fast this was all going to go. At what point in the story did you find that inflection point and what was the driver of that inflection
Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Who’s shopping to whom and when? When Jenny wants to get a GIA certification, is Jenny shipping directly to GIA, or is Jenny shipping to you and you are shipping to GIA? Benny De-Kalo: The way it works is, Jenny goes online and describes her item to the best of her knowledge. Taking
Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 3)
Benny De-Kalo: Let’s take an example that will illustrate it. Jenny just got divorced after three years. When she got married, they had bought a $14,000 diamond ring from Steve, the retailer. Steve bought it for $9,000. Now, she’s deciding to move on. She wants to do something better with the money. She first goes to Steve
Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Why did you do this particular company? What was the idea that you started with and why that idea? Benny De-Kalo: It took me a while to come up with the idea. I’m a finance person. At one point, we came up with an idea to finance consumers and try to provide loans
Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. I recently had dinner in Berlin with Alex and Suzi Zache, founders of Auctionata, an online auction house that has scaled to over $150 million in revenue. You can refresh that story here. Here’s another online auction story that is scaling nicely as well, specifically in