categories
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
Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What kind of traction did you see? With that industrial manufacturing concentration, what kind of traction did you see in the beginning? Peter Lehrman: Very quickly, we had customers willing to pay us a couple of hundred dollars a month on the demand side. The private equity community was ready to pay –
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Wrike CEO Andrew Filev (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What was the first year that you were actually selling this product? Was it 2007? Andrew Filev: Yes. If I remember correctly, we launched the product in June 2007. We had a 30-day trial. The first payment came in 30 days later. Sramana Mitra: At the end of 2007, how many customers did you have? What
Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Let me actually probe each of those points a bit. Did you, at this point, become an e-commerce site? Were people ordering online? Belisario Rosas: No. We barely, to this date, do any type of e-commerce. All of it is solution-based and face-to-face selling. Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about solution service infrastructure
Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How much are we talking? What kind of capital base did you start with? Peter Lehrman: About a million. Sramana Mitra: How did you bring this two-sided marketplace together? There’s always a chicken and egg in marketplaces. What was your strategy to bridge that? Peter Lehrman: We built two products and launched them
Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: You were doing, more or less, the same thing that the company you were working for was doing? Belisario Rosas: Yes, very much. We just continued accepting clients that we were dealing with or looking for new clients. Sramana Mitra: How did that ramp? Belisario Rosas: Like I said earlier, we started with
Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: In the event that you’re using equity as a financial instrument, is the expectation exit or do you also do dividend style financing? Peter Lehrman: We don’t do any of it. We’re the platform that connects the entrepreneurs with the investors. Those decisions are determined by the investors in partnership with the entrepreneurs
Peruvian Entrepreneur, Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Belisario Rosas, CEO of WEI (Part 1)
We hear a lot from Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. We hear some from Europeans. But thus far, not as much from Latin American entrepreneurs. Belisario Rosas is Peruvian, and is also interested in fostering further entrepreneurship in Latin America. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from?
Building a Capital Marketplace for Mid-Market Businesses: Axial CEO Peter Lehrman (Part 1)
Capital marketplaces are quite the trend these days. This story traces the evolution of Axial. This is a very different marketplace from AngelList. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some context and background of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Peter Lehrman: I was
