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- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
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- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
From Friends and Family Funding to $30 Million Exit: Vertical Response Founder Janine Popick (Part 1)
While we’re spending a great deal of time analyzing billion dollar Unicorn companies, it is important not to lose sight of the capital-efficient, bootstrapped or minimally capitalized companies that have achieved success, provided significant return on investment to their stakeholders, and built value for their customers. Read Janine Popick’s wonderful story! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start
Building a Fashion Accessories Marketplace from London: Kiyan Foroughi, CEO of Boticca (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What kind of ramp did you see based on that? Kiyan Foroughi: I think the most interesting stats I can give you are actually how well we did in the Christmas of 2014 versus Christmas of 2013. We increased our conversion rates by 90%. It was beyond my wildest dreams to increase it
Achieving Product-Market Fit That Allows You to Build Billion Dollar Unicorns: Gaurav Dhillon, Founder of Informatica and SnapLogic (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Help me rationalize what’s happening right now in the market regarding late-stage valuation bubbles. We have two kinds of bubbles in the startup venture world. One is in the seed capital. In 2013, 70,000 companies were angel-financed. That’s too much actually. It’s great that they got angel-funded, but then if you look at
Building a Fashion Accessories Marketplace from London: Kiyan Foroughi, CEO of Boticca (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: What were good sources of emails for you? Kiyan Foroughi: Our on-site campaigns are usually the most successful ones. But we had fine-tuned a way with Facebook ads to really get some good subscribers that would activate into good customers. The other thing was partnerships. Sramana Mitra: You were doing Facebook advertising. Is
Achieving Product-Market Fit That Allows You to Build Billion Dollar Unicorns: Gaurav Dhillon, Founder of Informatica and SnapLogic (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: The story is very different for a Dave Duffield starting Workday or a Gaurav Dhillon starting SnapLogic, because most of the people who are starting companies without that kind of track record do not have the options that you have. They have to figure out some way to navigate that early cash issue. Gaurav
Building a Fashion Accessories Marketplace from London: Kiyan Foroughi, CEO of Boticca (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: How did you meet these two funds? Kiyan Foruoghi: I knew one of the founders of the first fund. I didn’t know that he had founded this fund because he was the CEO of France’s biggest e-commerce company called PriceMinister. I just reached out to him as an angel investor. He loved the
Building a Fashion Accessories Marketplace from London: Kiyan Foroughi, CEO of Boticca (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What levels were you able to get to before you raised the convertible notes? There were actually transactions happening on your site? Kiyan Foroughi: There were transactions happening but we’re talking about single digits daily before the convertible notes. It was still very early. We started seeing more traction, and I can talk
Achieving Product-Market Fit That Allows You to Build Billion Dollar Unicorns: Gaurav Dhillon, Founder of Informatica and SnapLogic (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: 156 customer calls that you made gave you real conversations about real customer problems. Even though you didn’t sell what you went out to sell, this was a great opportunity to immerse yourself in customers and learn what they were really looking for. Gaurav Dhillon: This is AB testing to the power of