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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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- Platform as a Service
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- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What is the rationale behind relational database at this point? Eric Frenkiel: That’s a great question. In fact, it’s one of the first questions our investors asked us, “Why are you building a relational database? The entire world is going to NoSQL.” We had a very contrarian view at that time, which was that
A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: I have two questions. This was not a freelancer. It was a development company ,but you took one guy out of that company as a dedicated resource. Bhavin Parikh: That is correct. Sramana Mitra: How did you find it? How did you select this particular company? Bhavin Parikh: In our case, Pejman found
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Then what happens next? Bruno Lowagie: I had three different jobs in the first two years of my career because I saw myself as a guru. When I went to a job interview, I said, “I want to be the guru in something.” Obviously, they said, “We don’t need a guru. We need somebody
From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay at Facebook? Eric Frenkiel: Not very long, it was for 10 months in total. It was an amazing opportunity. We ultimately left Facebook because we had a bigger opportunity that we wanted to build. That was MemSQL. We joined in 2010 and left in early 2011. That was a
A Textbook Case Study of Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bhavin Parikh, CEO of Magoosh (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Bhavin Parikh and his now departed co-founder Hansoo Lee have built Magoosh with textbook diligence and great discipline. Along the way, Hansoo died of lung cancer, a tragedy that hangs over the company both as misfortune and as inspiration. Read this wonderful story of young Berkeley
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie (Part 1)
Bruno has bootstrapped a highly profitable company from Belgium. Now what? Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? Bruno Lowagie: I’m from Belgium. Sramana Mitra: I’m married to a Belgian. Were you born and raised in Belgium? Bruno Lowagie: Yes, I was born in Ypres, which is in the west of Flanders. I lived there until
From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 1)
Eric and his co-founder Nikita left Facebook to join YCombinator to develop their idea for MemSQL. The company has blossomed into a robust enterprise software business with a solid customer base. 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
Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: When you win big deals with enterprise customers, what is it that allows you to win these deals? Steven Boye: It is typically the quality of our products. Everybody that we compete with, they are currently Dropbox or Box users. Most of them are. For some reason, they like our solution better. Sramana Mitra: