Bootstrapping An Innovative Telecom Services Startup: Callture Co-founders Mamoon Rashid and Siva Sanmuga (Part 2)

Sramana: You said the three of you started as engineering students in Canada. Are you still based on Canada today? Mamoon Rashid: We have a very strong presence in Canada and still live there, but we have our primary business in the U.S. now. However, it is a Canadian company.

Bootstrapping An Innovative Telecom Services Startup: Callture Co-founders Mamoon Rashid and Siva Sanmuga (Part 1)

Mamoon Rashid and Siva Sanmuga are serial entrepreneurs who co-founded Telcan in 1997 followed by Callture in 2004. Both graduated from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, after completing their engineering studies. Callture is a Canadian technology company based in Ontario and is a subsidiary of Telcan. Sramana: Mamoon, can you give us some context to

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How Not To Finance Your Company: TalkPoint CEO Nick Balletta (Part 7)

Sramana: How did the business ramped up from 2005 through 2010? Nick Balletta: We have quadrupled revenues during that amount of time. Our revenues are north of $20 million.

How Not To Finance Your Company: TalkPoint CEO Nick Balletta (Part 6)

Sramana: After you reacquired the company in 2005, what were the strategic steps you took to build the business?   Nick Balletta: In 2005 we had to make a couple of key decisions. We had a couple of different platforms because of the various machinations of the company. We decided to make a concerted effort to

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How Not To Finance Your Company: TalkPoint CEO Nick Balletta (Part 5)

Sramana: In 2003 you reacquired the company. Had everything dwindled, or did it still have customers?  Nick Balletta: Yes, it still had customers. Morgan Stanley and Goldman are both still customers. When we dumped the company into a public shell, we ran it public for a year and a half. It was an undercapitalized technology

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How Not To Finance Your Company: TalkPoint CEO Nick Balletta (Part 4)

Sramana: What was the process of building NextVenue? Was Goldman your first customer? Nick Balletta: CNBC was technically our first customer because we had a take back agreement with them. Morgan Stanley and Goldman were the first who clients we had.

How Not To Finance Your Company: TalkPoint CEO Nick Balletta (Part 3)

Sramana: What was the story behind iBeam? Why were they so interested in acquiring your company? Nick Balletta: iBeam Broadcasting was involved with media entertainment. They had a similar concept as Akamai with an edge cache network except instead of using terrestrial distribution they used satellite distribution. When they write the book on Silicon Valley

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How Not To Finance Your Company: TalkPoint CEO Nick Balletta (Part 2)

Sramana: What was your strategy to grow since you were undercapitalized and were not finding an abundance of investors?  Nick Balletta: A former colleague of mine at MFS Communications named Doug Hickey was the CEO of a Global Center which had a similar business model but they were on the west coast. Global Center was

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