categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Leveraging Domain Knowledge and Network: Ari Paparo, CEO of Beeswax (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. If you have great domain knowledge and a domain-specific network, both of those can be leveraged to build excellent companies with reasonable amounts of capital and minimum friction. Beeswax is an excellent case in point. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are
$200 Million in Revenue Catering to the Bottom of the Pyramid: Issa Asad, CEO of Q Link Wireless (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How long did the model go on? Issa Asad: I did that in 2007. Then I sold my company to a company called Blackstone. They wanted it for the technology. They were able to take it to a new level, which was beyond my reach. At that point, I took a new venture.
$200 Million in Revenue Catering to the Bottom of the Pyramid: Issa Asad, CEO of Q Link Wireless (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: How did you get around those limitations? Issa Asad: I turned around and I started working with some of them. I said, “If I print my own cards and make my own brand, then I would only have to pay for usage.” I went to the carriers and I made contracts with them.
$200 Million in Revenue Catering to the Bottom of the Pyramid: Issa Asad, CEO of Q Link Wireless (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. This is a fascinating journey of an entrepreneur who has bootstrapped a $200 million business catering to poor people in the United States selling cellular phones and connections, and monetizing the data through advertising. In India, Reliance Jio has a similar strategy, by the way, for
Bootstrapping From Romania: Marius Hanganu, CEO of Tremend (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: How did you get the company off the ground? How were you acquiring customers? What was the genesis of the story? Marius Hanganu: For years, it was a Sequoia-based startup. Before it came to be known as IoT, it was called Big Data. The technical challenges around it are quite amazing. It was
Bootstrapping From Romania: Marius Hanganu, CEO of Tremend (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Marius has built a services company from Romania to over $5 million in revenue. Now, he is trying to bootstrap a product using the services business. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born,
Genesis to Acquisition: Mike Morris, CEO of Topcoder (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: What happens after that? Mike Morris: I can’t be specific about revenue after this point. This is where it gets interesting. At this point, we were cash-flow conscious. We weren’t doing all the things that we needed to do to grow more rapidly. We needed outside capital at this point. We had a
Genesis to Acquisition: Mike Morris, CEO of Topcoder (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: By this time, you’re one year into the project. Did you figure out monetization already or was that still open? Mike Morris: That was my job. I would say we probably started on that about halfway through the first year. My responsibility was to figure out how to build a software company on
