Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship from Estonia: Lauri Kinkar, CEO of Messente (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Estonia has made huge progress in building a startup ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about what has enabled that? What are the highlights of the ecosystem? Lauri Kinkar: We have to take a few steps back. Back when Estonia regained its independence in the early 90’s, it was a unique situation.

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Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship from Estonia: Lauri Kinkar, CEO of Messente (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much maturity do you want the project to reach? What is the benchmark that you use before you spin something out? Lauri Kinkar: When the first few enterprise customers with a prominent track record are ready, provided that we understand the reasons why they are ready to pay for that solution and

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Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship from Estonia: Lauri Kinkar, CEO of Messente (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is the process? Do you identify one problem to work on and then go find a customer with whom to start developing the solution? Lauri Kinkar: We’ve always believed that what you just described is the ideal scenario. If you always ask potential customers what they need, they probably would not come

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Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship from Estonia: Lauri Kinkar, CEO of Messente (Part 2)

Lauri Kinkar: Back in 2001, we founded Mobi with a group of other people who were university students at that time. It was a telecommunication company. Over time, we started to go into new areas, services, and new platforms.

Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship from Estonia: Lauri Kinkar, CEO of Messente (Part 1)

Lauri takes us into a country that has done amazingly well in developing a technology and startup culture. Fascinating! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What is the background?

Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 7)

Joel Thomas: The reason I’m willing to share this is I had a choice to make. I could either be a victim in 2014 or I could choose to fight and one day be a victor. I hired Heather, Justin, and Meagan. Sadly Heather got sick. Justin was incredibly good. To this day, he’s our

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Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you have a wonderful relationship with your dad. Joel Thomas: He’s been great and amazing to my mom. He’s my stepdad, but he’s been a part of my whole life. He has invested so much emotionally in all of us in helping all of us realize our purpose. My older

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Flying Through Turbulent Skies: Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jets (Part 5)

Joel Thomas: On January 6 of 2014, when I showed up at work, there were resignation letters. Everybody had quit and gone to work at another company. It was really challenging. I had just gotten engaged a year before. To wake up on my birthday and not have anybody at the company was scary. I

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