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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
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
A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2014? Bhavin Parikh: There was more growth in 2014. Also, how do we start expanding outside of GMAT and GRE? We realized that we could be a very strong company in GMAT and GRE, but to really achieve our mission and vision, we needed to expand much broader. We started
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What about business strategy? Not every company can, by the nature of their business, grow to $500 million. That’s what the VCs are looking for. By the nature of your business, how big a business can you build? Bruno Lowagie: If we continue what we are doing now, I don’t think we’re going
A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: When this happened, who else was in the company? Bhavin Parikh: When we raised in May of 2011, we made that blogger into a full-time employee. He was doing content marketing for us full-time. He was also helping us create content for our product. Then, we hired a software engineer who had interned with
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Belarus is not your own division? Bruno Lowagie: No, it’s not our own company. It’s a company with a subsidiary in Belgium. We pay the Belgian company but the people who work on iText are in Belarus. Sramana Mitra: How has revenue ramped? Bruno Lowagie: I believe that in 2011, we finished with $2.4
From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: When you raised the $35 million, how many customers did you have? Eric Frenkiel: I don’t recall the exact numbers, but it was around a dozen customers at that point. Sramana Mitra: Were these large companies? What kind of customers are we talking? Eric Frenkiel: They were all logos that anyone would recognize. One of the