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Ultra-light Startup with $6 Million Revenue: Car Part Kings CEO Michael Dash (Part 5)

Posted on Sunday, Apr 27th

Sramana: Are your distributors well equipped to handle the fulfillment directly to consumers? Michael Dash: Yes, they have large warehouses that stock these auto part inventories. Those warehouses are set up as shipment and fulfillment warehouses. When somebody orders a part from me, I electronically transmit that to them. They pick that part and put

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Bootstrapping a Big Data Company Using Services: DataSong CEO John Wallace (Part 1)

Posted on Saturday, Apr 26th

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. We maintain that one of the best ways to identify complex problems worth solving inside enterprises is by offering services to them, thereby gaining exposure to the domain. Datasong is yet another case in point. Related reading: Bootstrapping Using Services. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ in Revenue Without Dropping Out: Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer (Part 4)

Posted on Saturday, Apr 26th

Sramana Mitra: You were doing college level courses? Andrew Grauer: Yes, we focused on US colleges. Then, we expanded internationally as well and now we’re just starting to go into high school. Sramana Mitra: Within those colleges, was there any bias in terms of courses?

Ultra-light Startup with $6 Million Revenue: Car Part Kings CEO Michael Dash (Part 4)

Posted on Saturday, Apr 26th

Sramana: Let’s double down on the evolution of your business. Can you talk more about the progression of the business chronologically? When did you actually start the business? Michael Dash: We started it in September of 2011. We had sold our equity in our previous company in July of 2011. We started brainstorming our next

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ in Revenue Without Dropping Out: Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer (Part 3)

Posted on Friday, Apr 25th

Sramana Mitra: That’s actually great. We love these stories of student entrepreneurs who didn’t drop out. Going back to the subscription model, how did the revenue ramp? Andrew Grauer: It ramped really well in terms of growth rate but we were starting on a really small figure. I don’t remember the specifics. I do know

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Ultra-light Startup with $6 Million Revenue: Car Part Kings CEO Michael Dash (Part 3)

Posted on Friday, Apr 25th

Sramana: What was your team building process like? Michael Dash: We started very small with just David and I and then slowly started to add additional employees. We started with a database and network engineer. Then we hired a couple of PHP engineers and Magento developers. We also hired some designers and customer service members.

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ in Revenue Without Dropping Out: Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer (Part 2)

Posted on Thursday, Apr 24th

Sramana Mitra: Explain to me the value proposition of your concept. Andrew Grauer: The best way to understand it is to think about tutoring. The first version of this was a content version of tutoring – getting supplemental help for people to learn and succeed effectively in their specific course at their school. We really

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Ultra-light Startup with $6 Million Revenue: Car Part Kings CEO Michael Dash (Part 2)

Posted on Thursday, Apr 24th

Sramana: When did you start Car Part Kings? Michael Dash: We started it in late 2011. We incorporated and had the idea. We approached some different people about products that we were interested in. We launched in September of 2011. Sramana: What were you going to sell? Michael Dash: We talked to a number of

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