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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- 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
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
From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 4)
Tomas Gorny: We never went bankrupt. We paid off all the creditors. We filed what is called ABC – assignment for the benefit of creditors. After we filed that, we dissolved the company. In 2001, I was left with no money and was in pretty much the same situation when I came to America. Sramana
Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 3)
Sramana: What did you do next? Mohammed Farooq: I decided to move back to Texas. My friends from the State of Texas Governor’s Office had called me back. They wanted to transform Texas technology due to health laws, so I took over as the CTO of Health and Human Services. I drove state wide transformations
From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 3)
Tomas Gorny: As a result, while I was building my tech business in the web hosting industry, I was doing whatever it takes – valet car parking, carpet cleaning – to survive. For two years, I lived on $3 a day in terms of food allowance. I even remember days when I didn’t have any
Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 2)
Sramana: What was your next career step after your successful project for the State of Texas? Mohammed Farooq: In 1999, a guy called Manoj Saxena started a company in Austin and I became his first employee. I joined them on a journey of entrepreneurship. When I was working for the State of Texas in the
From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 2)
Tomas Gorny: When I was living in Germany, I was 17 years old and had learned the language. I decided that the PC industry is growing, so I started a PC distribution company. We were buying different PC components from vendors, assembling them to computers, and then selling them to businesses and individuals. What I started
Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. We continue to see exciting enterprise software companies being built by entrepreneurs who have roots in the consulting business and who have taken their domain knowledge and customer insights to develop compelling products to solve specific problems. Gravitant is yet another case in point. Sramana: Mohammed,