How To Monetize a Q&A Site: Answers.com CEO David Karandish (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You’re offering a content management platform that you offer as a SaaS product to these retailers? David Karandish: Exactly. And in that content management platform, we have a couple of different options. We can provide the content from the Answers.com community. Or we can help partner for the content with top brands. So

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Mass Customization in Online Fashion E-Commerce: Indochino CEO Kyle Vucko (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What did that allow you to accomplish next? Kyle Vucko: That allowed us to hire a couple of people to really figure out some of the paid acquisition side and continue to refine our processes and scale. Sramana Mitra: Paid advertising kind of stuff?

Bootstrapping a $175 Million Business with Services: TEOCO CEO Atul Jain (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? Atul Jain: Since then, we have become a global company. Today, we are about 1,300 employees and doing about $175 million in revenue. We are global with 50% of our revenue coming from outside of North America. Sramana Mitra: Your target customer base is still telecom?

How To Monetize a Q&A Site: Answers.com CEO David Karandish (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In the timeframe that you’re describing, there was activity in the competitive landscape. Of course Quora, with a huge amount of funding, came into the picture and has since become a very large site. How do you view Quora vis-à-vis Answers.com? David Karandish: First of all, we like to see investment into the

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Mass Customization in Online Fashion E-Commerce: Indochino CEO Kyle Vucko (Part 3)

Kyle Vucko: A smaller handful of my mentors got very engaged with the business planning process, providing feedback every few weeks. After being unsuccessful in getting the money in the business plan competitions, I went back and told one of them that we want to raise money and take this to the next level. He agreed immediately and offered some terms. I

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Bootstrapping a $175 Million Business with Services: TEOCO CEO Atul Jain (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking about? Atul Jain: We did our first acquisition in 2006 when we were around $20 million. Over time, we have done five acquisitions and this year, our revenue is going to be about $180 million. Sramana Mitra: So in 2006, you bring in another $5 million of revenue

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How To Monetize a Q&A Site: Answers.com CEO David Karandish (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You brought in $20 million worth of revenue through Answers.com. What strategic reengineering did you do to the property to get it to the next level? David Karandish: The previous team at Answers.com was doing very little optimization and split testing. For those who aren’t familiar with this, split testing is where you

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Mass Customization in Online Fashion E-Commerce: Indochino CEO Kyle Vucko (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s stay in the 2006 to 2007 timeframe. I’m assuming that you’re talking about a period when you hadn’t yet started the business because all of these things had to be in place to launch a custom tailoring shop, right? Kyle Vucko: Right. Sramana Mitra: So you identified one or two tailors in

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