Building a VC-Funded Fashion E-Commerce Company: Weddington Way CEO Ilana Stern (Part 2)

Ilana Stern: What was really interesting was that I saw this disconnect between the supply side and the demand side. If you took a millennial bride and looked at how she lived her life in general, it’s very different from how her mother lived her life in terms of how she consumes media, how she

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Your customer base is enterprise customers? David Steinberg: Yes, our customers are enterprise. Sramana Mitra: You were just talking about specifically how you’ve differentiated and brought the pieces together using, to some extent, a roll-up strategy. Is that part of the strategy now? David Steinberg: No, we’re not a roll-up strategy.

Building a VC-Funded Fashion E-Commerce Company: Weddington Way CEO Ilana Stern (Part 1)

There aren’t that many venture-funded fashion e-commerce companies out there. The main reason is that the venture capital business is dominated by men, and typically, women happen to be more in tune with fashion. Ilana Stern is building a very interesting fashion company focused on bridesmaid dresses as the starting point. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: These companies that you brought together to get the base level offering going, how did you identify them? David Steinberg: That’s a great question. I took a core team from my last company who focused on M&A and corporate strategy. That team started looking around and calling everybody on earth. For example, we started

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Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 7)

Sramana: Why did you make the decision to build your business without external financing? Christopher Aker: Once we started gaining traction, and once the industry woke up and realized where things were going, we have had incredible interest from VC firms. There has been a constant stream of phone calls and emails since the very

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: That IPO was 2004? David Steinberg: That’s correct Sramana Mitra: You stayed with the public company till? David Steinberg: 2007. Sramana Mitra: Is that the timeframe in which you started the current company?

Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 6)

Sramana: Can you talk about your experience of trying to build an executive team and scaling a company with a larger footprint? Also, where are you building the company? Christopher Aker: When the company had just three people, I moved back to New Jersey and that is where we established our offices. We are about

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I agree with you. Those are character traits that make great entrepreneurs. Without that, you’re not going to sustain because it takes a lot of work and energy. I’m trying to provide a framework that people can apply to ideas. David Steinberg: What I was going to say is the things that made

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