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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 SaaS Company with Operational Discipline: Betterworks CEO Kris Duggan (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What happened to Badgeville? Kris Duggan: It’s still going on. It’s growing and moving forward. Once you have a founding CEO replacement, there’s a lot of turmoil brought in by the CEO that was brought in. Now, they’re on to their third CEO. Those kind of challenges can be very disruptive to a
Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Were they willing to pay if you had a good website and if you had a company? Mikko Valimaki: We were able to get some of our very first money just by basically consulting and helping some of the first commercial users. For that, we improved the website a little bit. We tried
Building a SaaS Company with Operational Discipline: Betterworks CEO Kris Duggan (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What did you do after WebEx? Did you stay until when WebEx was acquired by Cisco? Kris Duggan: I left right around that time – a little after the IPO until right after the acquisition. After that, I was invited to join a DFJ-funded company to run sales globally. It was called Social
Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What year was this happening? Mikko Valimaki: This happened in 2008. Sramana Mitra: The first order of business was to get an open source product going right? Mikko Valimaki: We thought this whole thing through and we figured out that it cannot be a big enough business for us to grow this company
Building a SaaS Company with Operational Discipline: Betterworks CEO Kris Duggan (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Kleiner invested $15 million in Bettelworks on a concept. It’s an unusual financing that only experienced entrepreneurs can pull off. Read how Kris is building the company. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born,
Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. In our effort to bring you stories from the global startup ecosystem, here we introduce you to a wonderful success story from Finland. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what
From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: What is your customer acquisition strategy? Were you basically calling these people who have motivational speaking or other kinds of training programs and just direct-selling them into your technology? Brad Lea: Yes, pretty much. We would find and select a target and camp outside their office. We would knock on doors and wait until
From High School Drop Out to $20M in Revenue: Brad Lea’s Journey with Lightspeed VT (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: You were selling this particular training to car dealerships, and that became the core business for about a year. Brad Lea: Yes, I had about 50 to 60 dealerships subscribing to use my system. I realized that that recurring revenue was definitely what I wanted to focus on. What happened was, as I