Crowdsourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Lukas Biewald is the founder and executive chairman of CrowdFlower, the world’s largest enterprise crowdsourcing platform. Prior to co-founding CrowdFlower, Lukas was a senior scientist and manager within the ranking and management team at Powerset, Inc., a natural language search technology company later acquired by Microsoft.

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How To Build A Strong IP Portfolio: rPost CEO Zafar Khan (Part 7)

Sramana: In your history of the 11 years, have you litigated using these patents offensively before now? Zafar Khan: Yes. As the market becomes more interesting with shorter sales cycles, it is natural that more people want to get into the marketplace. We are trying to make it more well known that we are the

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How To Build A Strong IP Portfolio: rPost CEO Zafar Khan (Part 6)

Sramana: Going back to the beginning of your company, at what point did you start considering and filing for patents? It is expensive to go through the legal process of filing for patents and getting them approved. Zafar Khan: It is a very expensive experience, not just from the aspect of filing for the patents

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How To Build A Strong IP Portfolio: rPost CEO Zafar Khan (Part 5)

Sramana: How has your company progressed through 2011? What has your growth rate been? Zafar Khan: We raised our first private capital in 2001. We raised capital through a number of private financings over the course of time. We signed on the U.S. Government Accountability Office as our first government customer in 2003.

How To Build A Strong IP Portfolio: rPost CEO Zafar Khan (Part 4)

Sramana: What was the go to market strategy that you followed beyond your guerilla marketing efforts? How did you drive greater user adoption? Zafar Khan: For Registered Email we focused on a global business plan and devised a strategy to make our service the global business standard. We wanted to be the international standard for

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How To Build A Strong IP Portfolio: rPost CEO Zafar Khan (Part 2)

Sramana: You said you built the prototype products in 2000. Where you working under a company name at that time? Zafar Khan: At first we looked for a dot-com to use, but the only one that we found available was RegisteredPost.com. By chance we were able to get rPost as the shorter version. People in

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How To Build A Strong IP Portfolio: rPost CEO Zafar Khan (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Zafar Khan is the founder and chief executive officer of rPost, a company that provides registered email services. His previous experience includes has strategy consulting and finance jobs with Braxton Associates/Deloitte Consulting and Goldman Sachs. Khan has invented two U.S. patents, holds a bachelor of arts

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Using Facebook For Lead Generation: Underground Elephant CEO Jason Kulpa (Part 7)

Sramana: Where is Underground Elephant today? What is your revenue level, and what kind of growth rate are you seeing? Jason Kulpa: We are growing very fast. We project to do $25 million in revenue this year which is up from $9 million last year and $2 million the first year. We are growing very

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