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- The Startup Velocity Question
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Playing with Love to $10M: SeekingArrangement Founder Brandon Wade (Part 3)
Sramana: How long did it take you to get 4,000 users signed up to enable the launch of the site, and what were the demographics? Brandon Wade: It took me three weeks. At that point we had five women signing up for every single man. Sramana: So, you successfully turned the equation around from the
Playing with Love to $10M: SeekingArrangement Founder Brandon Wade (Part 2)
Sramana: Your hypothesis about the dating scene, and your solution to it, are definitely unique. Brandon Wade: It changed the equation, but at the same time it created controversy. A lot of people found the concept to be shallow or superficial. Controversy turned out to be very good for business. I certainly leverage controversy into
Playing with Love to $10M: SeekingArrangement Founder Brandon Wade (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Brandon Wade is the founder of SeekingArrangement.com, a dating website for successful men and women who want to meet them. Prior to founding SeekingArrangement, he worked for Microsoft, GE Power Systems, and Booz Allen Hamilton. He is a graduate of MIT, where he earned both his
Long Journey to a $435M Exit: Bytemobile Cofounders Chris Koopmans and Nicholas Stavrakos (Part 7)
Sramana: There is so much ubiquitous data use going on right now that it is obvious that carriers need to do something to keep up with infrastructure needs of this pattern. However, the consumer has this mentality that everything needs to be free or flat fee. Today’s Internet is crumbling over a colossal free rider
Long Journey to a $435M Exit: Bytemobile Cofounders Chris Koopmans and Nicholas Stavrakos (Part 6)
Sramana: I think there are a lot of great teams that get stuck. A great team is essential, but there is a lot more to having a successful business than simply having a great team. Chris Koopmans: If you have the right market or the right technology, you can still fail. You need a good
Long Journey to a $435M Exit: Bytemobile Cofounders Chris Koopmans and Nicholas Stavrakos (Part 5)
Sramana: The tricky part of the journey you have been describing is that you had venture investors. They want to see growth, revenues and a potential exit. There is a lot of pressure on entrepreneurs when the market does not evolve as expected. That is why I find it interesting that you were able to
Long Journey to a $435M Exit: Bytemobile Cofounders Chris Koopmans and Nicholas Stavrakos (Part 4)
Sramana: What level of growth were you able to sustain? We know 2001 was an unusually bad time. When did growth start to happen? Chris Koopmans: We saw a lot of growth in 2001 because we had had none the year prior. It was bad for markets, but it was an up year for us.
Long Journey to a $435M Exit: Bytemobile Cofounders Chris Koopmans and Nicholas Stavrakos (Part 3)
Sramana: How long after you received financing from Benchmark were you able to complete the first product you were able to ship to customers? Chris Koopmans: We had working code right away and started doing customer trials right away. We consider our first official product the first product that a customer purchased to deploy in