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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
Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: When you look at those early adopters of your technology, what strikes you as the common characteristics of these kinds of players? What were they doing that made them early adopters? Don Kassner: They had those typical early adopter feature sets. They understood that they needed to take their online education service to
Bootstrapping a Category Leading E-commerce Company: Tony Ellison, CEO of Shoplet (Part 4)
Sramana: In 1996, you added more people and secured an office. Was there any difference in your distribution or customer acquisition strategies? Tony Ellison: There was a lot of change in 1996. The biggest expansion was in terms of people and our margins started to erode because of that added expense. We also started adding
Bootstrapping a Category Leading E-commerce Company: Tony Ellison, CEO of Shoplet (Part 3)
Sramana: Does your business model still rely on third party logistics? Tony Ellison: Yes, by and large. We have a lot of 3PL relationships as well as a lot of private brands. Today, we offer over 600,000 items. We are in close to 16 different major categories. We started in CD-ROMs and then moved into
Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. One of the chief bottlenecks of the adoption of online education has been the lack of ability to handle testing in a secure fashion. ProctorU addresses that gap and is growing at a nice clip. Sramana Mitra: Don, let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about
Bootstrapping a Category Leading E-commerce Company: Tony Ellison, CEO of Shoplet (Part 2)
Sramana: You decided to go to market with 1,000 of the most popular products in your market segment. Did you buy that inventory? Tony Ellison: No, everything we did was drop shipped. We bootstrapped the business, so our only way of making things work was to partner with a distributor out of Chicago. For example,
Bootstrapping a Category Leading E-commerce Company: Tony Ellison, CEO of Shoplet (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. The Shoplet case study is interesting because it illustrates how an entrepreneur has bootstrapped a category leading e-commerce venture by trading off margins in favor of minimizing logistical challenges. Sramana: Tony, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Where were you born and raised? What
Building India’s First Billion Dollar Tech Company: InMobi Co-Founder Amit Gupta (Part 7)
Sramana: I have noticed a couple of trends that are very strong. Zoho is one of the first who did product development in India while selling globally as a SaaS product. I have seen a lot of companies following that model. They don’t even need to have a presence in the U.S. because they sell
Building India’s First Billion Dollar Tech Company: InMobi Co-Founder Amit Gupta (Part 6)
Sramana: Given the growth you have been describing and the model you had for expansion, I imagine that everybody was willing to give you money. Who did you select and why? Amit Gupta: Yes. For our next round, we spoke with a lot of potential firms but we ended up taking money from SoftBank. They