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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
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 6)
Sramana: How much have you been able to accomplish with your new engineering team when it comes to maturing your product? Varun Shoor: I personally believe the product is evolving. Our engineering practices can still use additional maturing although my teams believe we have evolved to a point where we are able to really leverage
Bootstrapping an App to $10 Million in Revenue: Christophe Bach, CEO of TextMe (Part 3)
Sramana: Were you bringing them to San Francisco without salary? Christophe: No. They had salary within TextMe from day one. Sramana: Okay. That’s interesting. That brings me to the next question, which is what was the financial structure of the company? Were you putting in some of your own money from your prior successes to start
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 5)
Sramana: Did your dad mentor you or help you as you were starting Kayako? Varun Shoor: I went to him for feedback but the feedback he was able to give was from a different industry. He was accustomed to dealing with factory laborers. Apart from that, he did help me when it came to managing
Bootstrapping an App to $10 Million in Revenue: Christophe Bach, CEO of TextMe (Part 2)
Sramana: Okay. Let’s talk about what is the premise with which you started TextMe, Christophe? Christophe: In 2010, we were looking at new opportunities and that was the time when some other mobile communication apps like WhatsApp, Viber, and Tango were in the market and I felt there was still a strong opportunity to do
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 4)
Sramana: Let’s drill down into how you built the company. What were the milestones in the early development of Kayako? Varun Shoor: As the business started picking up, I started to recognize what was important to continued growth. The most important aspect was trust. In 2002, if someone emailed support@kayako.com and expressed interest in buying
Bootstrapping an App to $10 Million in Revenue: Christophe Bach, CEO of TextMe (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. This is a wonderful story of a self-financed company that has built itself up to $10 million in profitable revenue. Led by Christophe Bach, an experienced and successful serial entrepreneur, it’s a text-book case study of effective bootstrapping. Sramana: Christophe, to start, tell me your back
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 3)
Sramana: How did the business ramp in 2002? Varun Shoor: It was quite interesting. I started receiving money at the very end of 2001, and then it kept coming in 2002. I kept telling my mom and dad that I had just earned $1,000 and they would not believe me. They made me show them
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 2)
Sramana: When did you learn to program? Varun Shoor: I learned to program when I was 13. We had x286 and x386 computers, so I started learning FoxPro and Visual FoxPro. This was in 1996. My father had a spare computer from his factory, so he gave it to me. I did not get a