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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
Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 5)
Taylor Tyng: By focusing on the organization and how teams collaborated, we could assist with making sure the intellectual knowledge was captured and shared. What we saw in our competing niches were people who were trying to solve more individualized and lighter weight problems. Another major inflection point for us was how cloud has been developing
Building a Cutting-Edge Telecollaboration Company: John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What else happened? It sounds like it’s a fairly straightforward enterprise software go-to market strategy. The beauty of that strategy is that you get these large deals and good cash flow. I think we understand that model. Is there anything else you did strategically that was particularly interesting? John Underkoffler: We’ve made it
Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: When did you launch Wiredrive? Taylor Tyng: Wiredrive was officially founded as a sole business in 2008, but its story probably started around 2003. Sramana Mitra: What happens next in the story? Taylor Tyng: We got to a point where we had a lot of legacy issues. We were trying to move from a web design
Building a Cutting-Edge Telecollaboration Company: John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Talk to me a little bit about the commercial. How much did these three major accounts pay you to do their projects? John Underkoffler: I will probably decline to give actual numerical figures in this context. This was more than enough to keep us going as a young startup. Sramana Mitra: This was
Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: In the chronology, where are we in now? Taylor Tyng: I’m going back and forth within that. We’re probably around the mid-2000s. Sramana Mitra: What is the next major strategic move and what year? Taylor Tyng: As I mentioned, we’ve never been venture-backed. We ran two businesses side by side — the design agency
Building a Cutting-Edge Telecollaboration Company: John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: You did a PhD as well at MIT? John Underkoffler: I did. I stuck it through. Sramana Mitra: What was your PhD in? John Underkoffler: My PhD was in a set of systems called the IO bulb and luminous room. The intent was to show, through prototypes, what would happen if we abandon
Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What kind of customers were adopting video advertising at that time? Who were these early adopters of video? Taylor Tyng: A lot of them were post-production companies and commercial production companies. In particular, post-production companies were very interesting early adopters for us. They’re built around pipeline workflows for technologies so they understood the investments
Building a Cutting-Edge Telecollaboration Company: John Underkoffler, CEO of Oblong Industries (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. John worked on Minority Report after finishing his PhD at the MIT Media Lab. Read on how he parlayed that experience into a supercool company that is scaling nicely, while reinventing collaboration. Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Where were you born, raised and in what