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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
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
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
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
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
Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What was the structure of how you would do this buyout? What proposal was on the table and how did you do the financial engineering of this buyout? Adam Schwartz: It was somewhat complicated actually. In all honesty, my partner Josh orchestrated it because he was already at IAC. Effectively, IAC owed Josh
Cross Border E-Commerce in Africa: Mall For Africa CEO Chris Folayan (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. We covered Mall for Africa some time back in TLEC. Here we trace their entrepreneurial journey. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Chris Folayan: I’m from Nigeria.
Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How did the company grow? How far did you get? Adam Schwartz: It’s a while ago now, so it’s hard to remember exactly. I worked on it from 2009 to 2011. We definitely had thousands of SKUs of textiles and we’ve had hundreds of suppliers and thousands of designers who were using this
Getting to Velocity: TeePublic Founder Adam Schwartz (Part 2)
Adam Schwartz: While all this was happening, the woman I was working with had some interaction with that PR agency. After exhanging ideas, we came upon the pain point of being a sustainable fashion designer. There was a sustainable fashion movement. A lot of people in fashion wanted to make sustainable choices, but everything that came after making those