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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
A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Interesting. That started converting as well. This was not only traffic but it was the right traffic. Bhavin Parikh: Yes. The thing is you don’t see the conversion immediately because people need to build that relationship with you. They come to your site. They read a post and start to think, “They really know
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Were you still in Gent? Bruno Lowagie: I was still in Gent and we’re still in Gent. In 2009, the list was finished and we didn’t find any new customers. We then made a bold move. We changed the old version of iText from the LGPL/MGPL to the AGPL. That’s a more viral license.
From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: How did they find out about you? Eric Frenkiel: We were introduced to investor networks. There were investors who knew the startup needed a really strong database product. They put us in touch. We gave them a demo and they knew that was going to help them develop fast. That was our first
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 4)
Bruno Lowagie: I asked what we can do to solve this. IBM said, “We have to do it the hard way.” Actuate was a company under the Eclipse umbrella. They entered a research agreement with Gent University. The deliverable was an IP overview. During 2007, I went to the university to do my job but as soon
A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: At that time, the competitive landscape was limited to that other company that was not as far along as you or were there other people who you were competing with? Bhavin Parikh: There were several other companies that we were competing with. There were the big institutions like Kaplan and Princeton Review. In
From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What is the go-to market strategy? Eric Frenkiel: We started the company with zero code. Since we had that ability to focus on what we wanted to build into the product, we’ve been able to build enterprise-grade features into MemSQL in a very short period of time. Our hurried go-to market strategy is
A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: At what point did you actually start getting more deliberate and intentional about the customer acquisition? Bhavin Parikh: To fill in the timeline, that was fall of 2009 when we launched the product. We were still in school. During that time, we actually tried hard to figure out customer acquisition but we really just
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Was this something that you created on the side? It was your own intellectual property. Bruno Lowagie: Yes. Sramana Mitra: This was in 2000? Bruno Lowagie: Yes. Sramana Mitra: What does that first release mean? Did you give it to the open source? Bruno Lowagie: I released it initially in LGPL library but then a