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- The Startup Velocity Question
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Successful Pivots on Product, Market, Business Model: Gigya Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Eyal Magen (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: I think there are clear winners. At the time that you were describing, Facebook wasn’t the clear winner by any stretch of the imagination. Once you have clear winners with massive market cloud, then those are the options that are being offered by other sites. Eyal Magen: Right. What also happened is that
Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer (Part 1)
Here’s a ‘what not to do’ lesson from Lori, except, she didn’t have any choice. A story of resilience that is now turning a corner, preparing for much bigger growth. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of
Serial Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh: Ron Bianchini’s Amazing Journey (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: So this is the story of your first company. What happens next? Ron Bianchini: I stayed at FORE for about four years. In three years’ time, we were acquired by Marconi Communications. They acquired us and I stayed there another year. In 2000, I left. Having been a professor in the past, intellectual distance
Successful Pivots on Product, Market, Business Model: Gigya Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Eyal Magen (Part 3)
Eyal Magen: We quickly found out that the best way to market our product is by working together with a small industry that provided content for Myspace pages. It was the beginning of the mashup era where you can grab a piece of code and post it on your page. This content could be a music
Serial Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh: Ron Bianchini’s Amazing Journey (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: We can go on and on about Computer Science, but what did you do after Carnegie Mellon? Ron Bianchini: I graduated in 1989. They asked me to stay on as a professor. So, I stayed on and taught. I very much enjoyed Computer Engineering. When my dad was at NYU and even when
Successful Pivots on Product, Market, Business Model: Gigya Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Eyal Magen (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What happens next? Eyal Magen: We went through the whole Internet boom. The bubble exploded and we had to survive. Eventually, we sold the company. When the company was sold, there was a comeback in the Internet and for raising money. Out of Hotbar, for example, came out seven or eight startups. These
Serial Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh: Ron Bianchini’s Amazing Journey (Part 1)
Ron is a fellow MIT alumnus who went to Carnegie Mellon for his PhD, and subsequently has done three successful systems ventures. This story offers insights into his methodology. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your story. Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances? Ron Bianchini: I
Successful Pivots on Product, Market, Business Model: Gigya Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Eyal Magen (Part 1)
Gigya started off with one set of market assumptions, and along the way, pivoted to a drastically different market, addressing an entirely different pain point. Four years later, it switched from an ad-supported business model to SaaS. It survived all these changes, and has now built a robust company, fueled by over $100 million of