The Long Road to Edutainment: Tabula Digita CEO Ntiedo Etuk (Part 3)

SM: Did you talk with venture capitalists? What was your funding strategy? NE: When I spoke with venture capitalists, they were not sure that there was a niche for educational software. They did know that people spent a tremendous amount of money on test preparation. They thought it would be interesting if we tied our

Read Full Article »

The Long Road to Edutainment: Tabula Digita CEO Ntiedo Etuk (Part 2)

SM: Where did you go to work after Columbia? NE: Citigroup, which is where my H-1B [visa] was from. I worked in an R&D group they set up called the Payment Innovation Group. It was challenged to come up with $100- million profit opportunities. I did that for about a year as part of their

Read Full Article »

The Long Road to Edutainment: Tabula Digita CEO Ntiedo Etuk (Part 1)

Ntiedo Etuk is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Electrical Engineering. He also holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, where he was a Beta Gamma Sigma graduate. He has managed the creation, implementation and analysis of various consumer products for Bank One and Citigroup. With Citigroup he was selected to work directly with

Read Full Article »

Venture Capital in China: David Chao of DCM (Part 7)

SM: Was there something I should have asked you but didn’t? DC: I would like to add some thoughts on innovation. I think in certain cleantech markets, China might be ahead of the curve. There are fewer regulations in China. If Menlo Park were going to put a smart energy grid storage in place, residents would most

Read Full Article »

Venture Capital in China: David Chao of DCM (Part 6)

SM: Seeing where it has been, where is innovation in China going? DC: In the cellular space they did it right by relying on open technologies, and innovation will continue there. They did not have anything native, so they had to rely on Motorola and Nokia, as well as an OS like Symbian.

Venture Capital in China: David Chao of DCM (Part 5)

SM: India has remained the IT back office. The best product company out of India is Zoho, which did $60 million last year as a fully bootstrapped company. That seems to be the best India has done in terms of product and innovation. DC: We were the seed and first investors in Sling Media, which

Read Full Article »

Venture Capital in China: David Chao of DCM (Part 4)

SM: I am intrigued that I have not heard you speak about bootstrapped entrepreneurship in China. It has been a very strong outsourcing destination for the manufacturing industry for several decades. There must have been a solid bootstrapped entrepreneurship ecosystem during that period, right? DC: In China there is a whole other world of traditional

Read Full Article »

Venture Capital in China: David Chao of DCM (Part 3)

SM: What percentage of your deals are China or Asia deals? DC: Today it’s 40% to 45%.