Building a Healthcare Company from Rhode Island: ShapeUp CEO Rajiv Kumar (Part 3)

Sramana: Is that when you started ShapeUp as a for-profit company? Rajiv Kumar: I got together with one of my colleagues, Dr. Brad Weinberg, who was in the same program as I was. He was a technologist and a self-taught computer programmer. He decided to help me build a software platform that would organize this

Read Full Article »

Serial Entrepreneur, Self-Financing to $50 Million: GoGrid CEO, John Keagy (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: So you have multiple technology stacks available as a service from your company for people looking for hosted Big Data platforms and you work with these platform vendors to offer them as a service.

Building a Healthcare Company from Rhode Island: ShapeUp CEO Rajiv Kumar (Part 2)

Sramana: What time-frame are we talking about when you were conceptualizing ShapeUp? Rajiv Kumar: This was in 2005. Sramana: That is when social media was starting to get introduced to the world at scale. Rajiv Kumar: It was. Facebook was created in 2004. The concept behind ShapeUp was less about technology and more about approach.

Read Full Article »

Serial Entrepreneur, Self-Financing to $50 Million: GoGrid CEO, John Keagy (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In terms 0f the complexity of the R&D, how much of that was predicated on being able to get the right technical talent? There’s definitely a truth – not just a myth – that it’s harder for self-financed companies to attract the top talent. Everybody’s looking at which VC is funding the company

Read Full Article »

Building a Healthcare Company from Rhode Island: ShapeUp CEO Rajiv Kumar (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  You wouldn’t think of Rhode Island as a hot bed of startups. However, a very nice eco-system is coming together, and success stories are emerging. Read ShapeUp’s wonderful journey … Sramana: Rajiv, let’s begin this story by exploring your background. Where are you from? What kind

Read Full Article »

Serial Entrepreneur, Self-Financing to $50 Million: GoGrid CEO, John Keagy (Part 5)

John Keagy: I have to tell you a story about InReach internet. I ordered three phone lines into my apartment. One was the sales line, one was support, and one was the billing line. I was answering all three phones. I’d use a different voice on each of the phones to make it sound like

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping a $7 Million Company in Houston: Gaurav Khandelwal, CEO of ChaiOne (Part 7)

Sramana: Let’s talk about oil and gas as an industry and how it consumes IT. You have talked about the application you are now taking to this industry. What other use cases can you see in that space? Gaurav Khandelwal: First of all, it is very difficult to get into these companies. The older workforce

Read Full Article »

Serial Entrepreneur, Self-Financing to $50 Million: GoGrid CEO, John Keagy (Part 4)

John Keagy: There’s a famous sociologist at my college called Harry Edwards. Harry Edwards was the first guy to say that professional athletes are not role models. Charles Barkley was the first professional athlete to implore kids, especially inter-city youths, to not see him as their role model. He said, “Don’t try to make your

Read Full Article »