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Bootstrap First to Exit, Bootstrap Again, Then Raise VC Money ALL from St. Louis: Stephanie Leffler, CEO of OneSpace (Part 1)

Posted on Monday, Jul 25th

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Stephanie bootstrapped her first company to $20 million in revenue from St. Louis. Her second, also from St. Louis, is venture-funded and crossed $10 million in revenue last year. Awesome entrepreneur, inspiring woman! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the very beginning of your journey. Where are you

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Building a Fat Startup in Corporate Training: Karl Mehta, CEO of EdCast (Part 6)

Posted on Saturday, Jul 16th

Sramana Mitra: How do you charge? Is it a per user pricing model? Karl Mehta: The pricing model is exactly like Salesforce or Slack. It’s a per user per month model. It’s close to $5 to $7 per user per month. It ratchets down with volume. If you have more than 10,000 employees, you get

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Building a Fat Startup in Corporate Training: Karl Mehta, CEO of EdCast (Part 5)

Posted on Friday, Jul 15th

Sramana Mitra: To what extent are your corporate clients specifying what areas they want learning content in, which then drives your strategy of finding people who can produce that content and deliver that content on your network? Karl Mehta: When a corporate client sets up EdCast, they tell us the topics for which they set up

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Building a Fat Startup in Corporate Training: Karl Mehta, CEO of EdCast (Part 4)

Posted on Thursday, Jul 14th

Sramana Mitra: This is funded by Menlo? Karl Mehta: Menlo was one of the investors, but the round was led by SoftBank Capital. Sramana Mitra: What, in a nutshell, is the premise of EdCast? Karl Mehta: EdCast is a knowledge network for anyone to develop lifelong learning as a passion. We have a knowledge economy

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Bootstrapping an Ad Tech Company from Paris: Daniel Nathan, CEO of BidMotion (Part 7)

Posted on Wednesday, Jul 13th

Sramana Mitra: The $9 million in 2015 was your revenue or was it the gross spend of how your advertisers are spending with you? Daniel Nathan: It’s the gross spend but the average margin was pretty high. Sramana Mitra: From an accounting point of view, how do you calculate revenue? Growth spend is not revenue

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Bootstrapping an Ad Tech Company from Paris: Daniel Nathan, CEO of BidMotion (Part 6)

Posted on Tuesday, Jul 12th

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. When you got a bunch of companies going, how were you pricing? Was it a subscription pricing model or was it a media buying pricing model where you were taking a percentage of the budget you were managing? Daniel Nathan: We were doing arbitrage. We go a client and say, “We

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Building a Fat Startup in Corporate Training: Karl Mehta, CEO of EdCast (Part 2)

Posted on Tuesday, Jul 12th

Sramana Mitra: What happened to the first company? Karl Mehta: We built it all the way. We had a great Series A from Mayfield Fund. Palm, which at that time was a mobile device, was an investor. We built it to about 70 people. Then, 9/11 happened. We had a hard time. Nobody was funding any

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Bootstrapping an Ad Tech Company from Paris: Daniel Nathan, CEO of BidMotion (Part 5)

Posted on Monday, Jul 11th

Sramana Mitra: You’re catering to French clients? Daniel Nathan: Actually, we don’t have any French clients. Sramana Mitra: Where are the clients from? Daniel Nathan: US – a lot of them from San Francisco. Sramana Mitra: How did you find these clients?