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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 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
Bootstrapping Using Services: Taylor Tyng, CEO of Wiredrive (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Taylor has bootstrapped Wiredrive over a 17-year period to about $10 million. Today, he has options ahead to grow organically or raise money. Either way, an interesting journey. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were
Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking when you became profitable? Guy Mucklow: It was four years after we started, so 2005. It’s interesting because it begs the question of going down the VC route or bootstrapping. Increasingly, a lot of tech entrepreneurs that I meet who have taken funding regret doing that. I know
Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What kind of conversion rates did you experience? Are you willing to discuss that? Christian Vanek: Sure, we’re an open book. From our website, we have about 1% conversion rate of visitors to trial or free customers. From free customers to paid customers, we have about 0.7% conversion rate. For our trial customers that come
Bootstrapping to $20 Million From London: Guy Mucklow, CEO of PCA Predict (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: How much were you selling for? What was your business model and pricing model? How were you monetizing your product? Guy Mucklow: I might have mentioned earlier that we had two main licensing models in the early days because we saw mass market potential for this kind of service. We looked to go
Bootstrapping to $13 Million with Freemium and Free Trials: SurveyGizmo CEO Christian Vanek (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: I have a few questions on this. First, talk to me about your freemium strategy. What did you offer for free and what did you offer for premium? Christian Vanek: What we offer for free now is probably too much. That comes back down to the cultural problems in my organization. I tend
