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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
entrepreneur journeys
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: How did you price this new product? Feris Rifai: The original OEM agreement started out as a royalty fee. The Symantec folks were selling it directly to the client. That grew from there to cover more of the Symantec portfolio of products. It also grew to Symantec actually including it in their product
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I got this. You had a bunch of partners and you were doing value-added type of work for these people? Ferris Rifai: It was not reselling. It was more services-focused. They would use us as an extension. Sramana Mitra: In that process of doing integration and consulting, it sounds
Bootstrapping Using Services: Bay Dynamics Co-Founders, Feris Rifai and Ryan Stolte (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What year did you start this consulting company? Ryan Stolte: 2001. Feris Rifai: Precisely on October 16, 2001. Sramana Mitra: You did analytics consulting. How long did you continue in this consulting mode? Ferris Rifai: When we first started, we started with consulting in analytics and, in parallel, information security and IT. What we saw
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: The scenario that you are pointing out is a scenario that a lot of venture-funded entrepreneurs face. Business is not the rocket that the VCs thought it would be, but it’s a healthy profitable long-term business that the entrepreneur may be interested in running. That’s a scenario where VCs and entrepreneurs have to
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: You had a $5 million round. You were pretty much profitable. What are some of the major inflection points? Jason Robbins: The $5 million basically almost disappeared. By the time money came in, the investors wanted a CEO that was known in the marketplace so they then can then raise the next round
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: On the website, you would provide the designs that your suppliers were able to build against. You would provide that catalog and fulfill through that supplier network. Jason Robbins: Exactly right. You would come to my website and you’d say I like that. You would upload your logo. I would send your logo
Innovating in Fintech: Jason Hogg, CEO of Lending.com (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What did American Express do with it? Did they keep the card? Since 2009 on to 2015, what happened in the business? Jason Hogg: American Express actually created Serve, which is their reloadable prepaid product. We were also, at that time, early in the mobile and smartphone game with money transfer and other transaction
Innovating in Fintech: Jason Hogg, CEO of Lending.com (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Chronologically, where are we? What year is this? Jason Hogg: We’re midway through 2007. I’ve done my raise in 2006. In 2007, we had gotten the customer base that I was just describing to you both on the credit card and the peer-to-peer side. We completed a $50 million B round at that
