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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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Rolling Up Bill Management: Flint Lane, CEO of BillTrust (Part 2)
Sramana: When you started PayTrust, the Internet was not as pervasive and consumers were not as mature as they are today. Flint Lane: That is absolutely true. There was not as widespread acceptance of financial services online. It was 1998, so the Internet was out there. There was a lot of noise about it, but
Rolling Up Bill Management: Flint Lane, CEO of BillTrust (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Flint Lane is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Billtrust, a company offering B2C and B2B billing services. Billtrust has earned numerous awards from business organizations, including the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 500. Prior to founding Billtrust, he was the founder
Freemium, Conversion Rates and More: AVG CEO J.R. Smith (Part 7)
Sramana: Where do you see AVG going from here? J.R. Smith: Moving forward, we have to figure out how to increase monetization of our users without charging them a dime. Our mantra is to ensure everyone is protected, paid user or free users. The more we move toward indirect monetization, the more we will be
Freemium, Conversion Rates and More: AVG CEO J.R. Smith (Part 6)
Sramana: What does the competitive landscape look like for you? J.R. Smith: Competition is pretty vast for us. By giving away our products and figuring out how to cross-sell and upsell, we have grown our customer base to 106 million active users. When you get 100 million users, that changes the business model. We are
Freemium, Conversion Rates and More: AVG CEO J.R. Smith (Part 5)
Sramana: How was traffic being driven to the AVG website? J.R. Smith: It was mostly coming from the web as organic traffic. There were so many affiliates and partners giving away the software on their websites that Google had listed AVG as one of the top search results for the term “free antivirus.” It was
Freemium, Conversion Rates and More: AVG CEO J.R. Smith (Part 4)
Sramana: What did you do after you Dot Mobile? J.R. Smith: As I was leaving Dot, I had heard that a firm I knew had purchased a small antivirus company called AVG out of the Czech Republic. It was a company that was doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue and had a nice
Freemium, Conversion Rates and More: AVG CEO J.R. Smith (Part 3)
Sramana: What did you do after you left Telecom Solutions Group? J.R. Smith: I left to found a MVNO, which is a mobile virtual network operator. Virgin Mobile is perhaps the most famous MVNO. MVNOs lease capacity with network operators, and they are in charge of sales, marketing and distribution. They have their own brand
Freemium, Conversion Rates and More: AVG CEO J.R. Smith (Part 2)
Sramana: How long did your journey in cellular continue? J.R. Smith: My U.S. experience in cellular lasted until 1997. Shortly before VoiceStream was acquired by T-Mobile, I left to go on a temporary assignment with Motorola in Prague. They were deploying a network for Radio Mobile and I knew a lot about network deployment, cite