Crossing the Desert, Hitting the Jackpot: Taboola CEO Adam Singolda (Part 3)

Sramana: What was your frame of mind as you approached the angel investors? You had just left the Army and it sounds like you may have been looking for a bit of a break at that point. Adam Singolda: At that time, I was considering two things. One was to do an MBA because I

Read Full Article »

Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In 2008, you have got one acquisition under your belt. What happens next? Blaine Vess: We ended up buying another site, which was called All Free Essays. It was another site that has been around since about 2000. It was not monetized at all. I had been reaching out to the owner for

Read Full Article »

Crossing the Desert, Hitting the Jackpot: Taboola CEO Adam Singolda (Part 2)

Sramana: There are a lot of entrepreneurs who have a military background. I think there are some unique skill sets or opportunities that you can gain from military service. Adam Singolda: I also had a unique opportunity to work with large data sets and applied mathematics. I joined as an engineer and I was an

Read Full Article »

Crossing the Desert, Hitting the Jackpot: Taboola CEO Adam Singolda (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Taboola had to sustain four years of zero-revenue, until it hit a million dollar revenue year in 2012. In 2013, their revenue run-rate is $100 million. It’s an amazing story! Read on… Sramana: Adam, let’s start with a bit of your personal background. What kind of

Read Full Article »

Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was Chris working full time or did he take up another job? Blaine Vess: Chris was working full time on this business. He was also doing the contract programming with me. Sramana Mitra: You guys were doing contract programming. You had a job and Chris was doing the business?

Bootstrapping a Robust SaaS company from India: Rategain CEO Bhanu Chopra (Part 7)

Sramana: How do you calculate TAM and how much of the TAM is still available in the market? The OTA segment is relatively small and it sounds like you have saturated that segment quite well. Bhanu Chopra: There is not any publicly available data regarding the OTA segment. If you look at the top OTAs,

Read Full Article »

Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the motivation? If I am a student, why would I want to load up my course notes? Blaine Vess: The main motivation is to get access to other people’s course notes or research. Say you’re writing a research paper on global warming and you have a writer’s block or you’re three

Read Full Article »

Bootstrapping a Robust SaaS company from India: Rategain CEO Bhanu Chopra (Part 6)

Sramana: What are the techniques that worked really well for you? Bhanu Chopra: The fact that we focused on expanding in an area that we did well in was very important. We expanded our online travel agent business and got a lot of new customers. The other major key was moving into strategic new areas

Read Full Article »