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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
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: There’s an electronic integration that you were able to put in place with these distributors? Steve Annese: Yes, there was only one distributor at that time. Sramana Mitra: They were electronically and sufficiently together to be able to establish that bridge with you. Steve Annese: Yes. Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking?
Managing Multiple Pivots While Scaling to $50 Million: MotionPoint CEO Will Fleming (Part 1)
Will and his partner started with a somewhat flawed business idea, but has successfully built up to a $50M company. Along the way, pivots had to happen, and are still happening. Interesting study in customer-driven strategy. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born, raised, and in what
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How much inventory did you take on and how did you source that inventory? This is one of the key questions for every bootstrapped e-commerce entrepreneur. Steven Annese: When I first started, I didn’t take any inventory on. I basically had a drop shop agreement with a major distributor at that time that
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Did you know anything about the lighting business? Steven Annese: I didn’t but my sister was working at a lighting distributor. She told me that there were some companies that were trying to do business with them in the online world. That’s actually where my lead came from so I have to thank
Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Venture: Elite Fixtures CEO Steven Annese (Part 1)
I’ve always been bullish about niche e-commerce. Here’s yet another story of an entrepreneur who has successfully bootstrapped a company in high-end light fixtures. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Steven Annese: I’m a child
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Talk about the new product, and how did you identify the new product definition? How did you achieve product market fit? Ryan Stolte: Through this relationship we had and the amount of breadth of customers that we were exposed to, we did get in front of a lot of these customers. They would
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: How did you price this new product? Feris Rifai: The original OEM agreement started out as a royalty fee. The Symantec folks were selling it directly to the client. That grew from there to cover more of the Symantec portfolio of products. It also grew to Symantec actually including it in their product
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I got this. You had a bunch of partners and you were doing value-added type of work for these people? Ferris Rifai: It was not reselling. It was more services-focused. They would use us as an extension. Sramana Mitra: In that process of doing integration and consulting, it sounds
