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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
Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Chris had many opportunities to raise money along the way while bootstrapping to a $60 million revenue level. Find out why he chose not to. Sramana: Chris, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Tell me where you are from and set the stage for
Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 7)
Sramana: You have described an IT organization that is disjointed. You have a new model, IT as a supply chain. How do you actually solve the IT problem? What are you doing for a customer that makes the transition to IT supply chain? Mohammed Farooq: We discover what any of the business units have purchased
From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: When did you start United Web? Tomas Gorny: In 2008. Over the years, United Web became an investment vehicle for our and other businesses. What I’m really focused on and really passionate about is the business that we do now – Nextiva. Nextiva technically started its development on the product in 2006. In
Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 6)
Sramana: The bottom line is that you still have a lot of marketing to do to educate enterprises about the transformations you enable. Mohammed Farooq: Yes, we do. Last year, we had a lot of work to do in this space, and this year, we are finally getting closer. People are starting to understand how
From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: You had web hosting, email, domains, and you had a suite of widgets that people need to build and host a web business. You were doing it all for a flat price at $7.95 a month. Tomas Gorny: That’s correct. The magic was really in the last statement. The control panel and the widgets
Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 5)
Sramana: Let’s talk about your financing strategy. You raised a round in 2012 and another in 2013. How many customers did you have by the time you raised your first round? Mohammed Farooq: We had three customers. Texas was our largest customer because they had six different agencies, so it’s almost like we had six
From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: You had $6,000 in the bank and you used your American Express credit line and started a web hosting company. How did that work? Can you talk a bit more about the early journey of that company? Tomas Gorny: I bought two servers. I was very technically oriented, so I installed them and
Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 4)
Sramana: You talked about the work that you did for the State of Texas. What work did you do for IBM? Mohammed Farooq: We took the same model and replicated that with IBM for the State of Indiana. Indiana wanted the same thing and IBM needed help. IBM bought our services and the product that