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

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)

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)

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?

Building a Fat Startup in Corporate Training: Karl Mehta, CEO of EdCast (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Serial entrepreneur Karl Mehta is applying consumer education models from MOOCs and such to the world of corporate training. Very interesting spin on online learning. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised,

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Bootstrapping an Ad Tech Company from Paris: Daniel Nathan, CEO of BidMotion (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? Daniel Nathan: My first company was not going to copy the technology I was building. They were not going to buy on CPM. On the other side, my company was not going to go to direct advertisers. The issue was that advertisers wanted to work with us directly because they

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Greece Has A New Atlas: Marine Traffic CEO Demitris Memos (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Listening to you and the story, you’ve already hit your stride. You’re growing at 60% year over year. You’ve got internally generated cash. If I were you, I would probably not take external financing. How does this company become a billion dollar company? That question is not clear. On the other hand, you

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Bootstrapping an Ad Tech Company from Paris: Daniel Nathan, CEO of BidMotion (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did this company do? Daniel Nathan: Groupon for video games. I went there for the summer. I said, “We’re going to become an incubator and build multiple companies around video games.” I said, “I’m going to build a mobile ad network specialized in video games.” We started with three people in 2012.

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Greece Has A New Atlas: Marine Traffic CEO Demitris Memos (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How many of those customers do you have? Is that a much larger customer base? Demitri Memos: In total, we have just over 4,000 paying customers. Sramana Mitra: There is a lot of SMBs that need to track and that includes all kinds of smaller operators. Demitri Memos: There is also service providers

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