Building a Cutting Edge Drone Technology Company: Tom Walker, CEO of DroneUp (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell us how the side project turned into a business. Tom Walker: I’ll tell you a funny story along the way. We had some people join the organization as volunteers. A retired CIO from a large company came on board. We were trying to build something, but we didn’t know what it was.

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From Solo Techie Entrepreneur to High Growth, Profitable Enterprise AI Success Story: Findability Sciences CEO Anand Mahurkar (Part 1)

I always love doing stories of my readers. Anand has been following the blog since 2010. He has built a terrific, fundamentals-focused AI company. And I am thrilled. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, and raised, and in what kind of background?

Building a Cutting Edge Drone Technology Company: Tom Walker, CEO of DroneUp (Part 1)

The drone industry is a massive beneficiary of the Corvid pandemic. Read how Tom has shepherded DroneUp to hyper-growth from its bootstrapped beginnings and a slow start. 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?

Building a Capital-Efficient, Highly Scalable Smart City IoT Venture: LYT CEO Timothy Menard (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds to me like you have very large deals in your pipeline. At some level, $5 million may be the only money you need to build this business. Timothy Menard: Absolutely. The mindset was to build a company and be revenue-generating. Having these large contracts that pay 90% of the contract value

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Building a Capital-Efficient, Highly Scalable Smart City IoT Venture: LYT CEO Timothy Menard (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Santa Clara was the first that adopted your technology? Timothy Menard: San Jose was first. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go into the mechanics of how you built the company from a financial engineering point of view. The first grant was $250,000. You got a second grant because of the discussions with Santa Clara and

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Building a Capital-Efficient, Highly Scalable Smart City IoT Venture: LYT CEO Timothy Menard (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Was there a customer that you had in mind? Timothy Menard: All sides – automotive and the communities they drove in. Sramana Mitra: How did you get the company off the ground? Timothy Menard: I applied for a Federal Small Business Research and Innovation grant. The company started on a quarter-million grant. I

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Bootstrapping Using Facebook Ads to $5M: Dow Janes Co-founders Laurie-Anne King and Britt Baker (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you follow the same strategy in the second year? Britt Baker: Exactly. Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. It doesn’t sound like you need to make any change. You just keep executing and put more money into Facebook. Is that correct? Britt Baker: That works well until your Facebook ad account gets shut down.

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Bootstrapping Using Facebook Ads to $5M: Dow Janes Co-founders Laurie-Anne King and Britt Baker (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Is this a rolling program? Britt Baker: People can join anytime. We took on a handful of people in March from another Facebook post. Then we really decided to take more people in April which is when we started advertising. Sramana Mitra: What kind of advertising did you do? Britt Baker: We advertised

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