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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  We’re seeing a wonderful trend of student entrepreneurs building substantial businesses without dropping out. Blaine Vess is yet another great role model. This story outlines Blaine’s entrepreneurial journey. Sramana Mitra: Blaine, let’s start with introducing our audience to you. Where did you grow up? Where were

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Bootstrapping a Robust SaaS company from India: Rategain CEO Bhanu Chopra (Part 5)

Sramana: What year was it when your OEM partnership went south? Bhanu Chopra: In 2010 and 2011, there were a couple of major products that were contributing significant revenue to us. Our partner bought all of our competitors during that same time-frame, so we had to make some transitions in order to survive, and it

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