Cross Border E-Commerce in Africa: Mall For Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you raise? Chris Folayan: We don’t disclose the details, but it was a seed round. Sramana Mitra: When was this? Chris Folayan: This was four years ago. Sramana Mitra: So 2012. Chris Folayan: Yes.

Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 7)

Adam Schwartz: We don’t really know what to expect. Even if you’re a $4 million company, you’re still not that big. You don’t know how far this is going to grow. Are we going to grow 100% again or is it not going to scale that way? We’re just going three months at a time and just reinvesting

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Bootstrapping with Services from London: Gurman Hundal, CEO of Media IQ (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Gurman has bootstrapped a fast growth company using services. Read about his impressive journey. 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? Gurman Hundal: I was born in

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Cross Border E-Commerce in Africa: Mall For Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Besides selling some of your incubated projects and shutting down some others, you said the web development company’s journey was about 10 years. I take it around 2010, you moved on from it. Was the company sold or did it continue and you moved on? Chris Folayan: It continued till about a few

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Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 6)

Adam Schwartz: Through this marketplace, we started doing three things. One is, we invested heavily in improving the platform and the technology behind the store and product creation. There were some pretty serious technical challenges in taking a high resolution image from designers and turning that instantly into a ton of different product images. It’s a

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Cross Border E-Commerce in Africa: Mall For Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What else did you do in that incubation mode? What other company or projects did you do? Chris Folayan: We were in the incubation mode throughout OCFX. We did Guru Country and we had an auto dealer’s website where dealers could create their own site for their dealerships. It’s more of a template

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Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: If I got it right, you bought BustedTees at $4 million in 2011 and got it up to $8 million in 2013. Adam Schwartz: Yes. Sramana Mitra: You sold it at that point? Adam Schwartz: We were growing through this customer acquisition program. We had done a lot of work to get our

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Cross Border E-Commerce in Africa: Mall For Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You were based out in the Bay Area? Chris Folayan: I was based in San Jose. Sramana Mitra: What was the duration of the web design company? Chris Folayan: I was with it for 10 years. We worked for pretty much all the Top Fortune 500 companies in the Bay Area. We also

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