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Scaling to $10M ARR with a Virtual Company: Fred Plais, CEO of Platform.sh (Part 1)

Posted on Wednesday, Aug 1st

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Fred has built a wonderful company with a virtual architecture. Read on to see how. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Fred Plais: I was

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Turning Philanthropy into a Double Bottomline Business: Ram Palaniappan, CEO of Earnin (Part 3)

Posted on Wednesday, Aug 1st

Ram Palaniappan: Then I asked them to fill out a web form if they needed money. Once I had the web form up, people who I didn’t know tried to use it. I got access to their employer’s time attendance system, so I was able to do it for people who I didn’t know. That’s

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Turning Philanthropy into a Double Bottomline Business: Ram Palaniappan, CEO of Earnin (Part 2)

Posted on Tuesday, Jul 31st

Sramana Mitra: How big did the company become revenue-wise? Ram Palaniappan: The company ended up with a private equity firm getting a stake in it. Subsequently, the company was acquired by a public company called Green Dot. Sramana Mitra: Was the parent company financing it when you were brought in? Ram Palaniappan: It was financed

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Turning Philanthropy into a Double Bottomline Business: Ram Palaniappan, CEO of Earnin (Part 1)

Posted on Monday, Jul 30th

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  When people have to live paycheck to paycheck, life can easily get unbearable. Earnin offers loans against paychecks as collateral to alleviate this incessant pressure to low income families at affordable rates. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you

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Scaling to Over $10 Million From Delaware: Ye Zhang, CEO of Katabat (Part 4)

Posted on Sunday, Jul 22nd

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the customer service value proposition. What is it that you do specifically that delivers on the customer service value proposition? Ye Zhang: We are still focused on financial institutions. Financial institutions have a lot of legacy systems behind their firewall. There will be a lot of silo’d communication components. One for

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Scaling to Over $10 Million From Delaware: Ye Zhang, CEO of Katabat (Part 3)

Posted on Saturday, Jul 21st

Sramana Mitra: Go back to when you started with the collections value proposition with this digital marketing technology and tell me how long you did the business focused on collections agencies. How far did you get by selling to that class of customers? How much revenue were you able to build up? Ye Zhang: We had

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Scaling to Over $10 Million From Delaware: Ye Zhang, CEO of Katabat (Part 2)

Posted on Friday, Jul 20th

Ye Zhang: Very quickly, we found that it’s a very tedious job to set up a collection agency because of a lot of compliance rules. Compliance rules are very different in different states and cities. We were required to acquire licenses at individual state level. Doing that would take a lot of manpower. It was

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Scaling to Over $10 Million From Delaware: Ye Zhang, CEO of Katabat (Part 1)

Posted on Thursday, Jul 19th

The state of Delaware has been working with 1Mby1M to stimulate entrepreneurship. Here is a wonderful success story from the region. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Ye Zhang: I was born in China. I

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