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HOT TOPICS
- 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
Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Was the product you developed acceptable within the Indian regulatory system? Ambarish Gupta: Yes. We solved the problem for India. Most of the emerging markets have the same regulations, which is VoIP is not allowed. We spent our first year developing the first PSTN cloud telephony platform in the world. That was a big breakthrough
From Friends and Family Funding to $30 Million Exit: Vertical Response Founder Janine Popick (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: What was the competitive landscape when it came to keywords in AdWords. It sounds like that was a major channel and that did become very competitive. Janine Popick: Brutal. Sramana Mitra: Absolutely, brutal is the word. Janine Popick: You’re competing with people who can spend a lot more money. That’s what it comes
Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Whom did you raise money from and what was the process of raising money? Ambarish Gupta: Initially, I and my co-founder just put in 1-1.5 million rupees (~$20,000 -$30,000) to build the infrastructure. We had built up a small platform and were struggling to find some takers. We didn’t really want to raise money immediately.
From Friends and Family Funding to $30 Million Exit: Vertical Response Founder Janine Popick (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: That’s perfectly fine. Let’s double-click down on some of the strategic moves as you were building the company. You talked about your financing strategy. You kept raising money till about $1.3 million at the same valuation for almost a year and a half. What about customer acquisition? What about the team? What strategies
Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: It’s not really operating experience. It’s consulting. Ambarish Gupta: If you want to join PE, you need operating experience, for which you have only two options. You either work for a corporate for five years or you work for consulting firms for two years. Two or three years is quite a short time
From Friends and Family Funding to $30 Million Exit: Vertical Response Founder Janine Popick (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: 2001 was a very difficult time. Janine Popick: Over two developers that I’d worked with previously asked me if I wanted to start this company. I agreed. My husband agreed not to start the company with me, which was actually a great thing because he came on later on and helped us kick-start our marketing
From Friends and Family Funding to $30 Million Exit: Vertical Response Founder Janine Popick (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What did you do for Xoom.com? Janine Popick: I was in charge of all of the direct marketing and e-commerce. We did a lot of email marketing and a lot of marketing out to millions of people that would sign for their free webpage. We would try to upsell them clipart and all the
Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. [Also check out my Entrepreneur Journeys book, Seed India – How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India] Selling technology to small businesses in India is hard work. Customers are uninitiated to technology’s sophistication, and have expectations of high-touch customer service even when they pay little in subscription fees.