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
entrepreneur journeys
Building HubSpot to a Unicorn: Dharmesh Shah’s Amazing Entrepreneurial Journey (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: How many years did it take you through the $500 million to the IPO? Dharmesh Shah: A little over seven years. Sramana Mitra: This is basically what VC’s are looking for – to go from zero to $100 million in five to seven years. Not every entrepreneur has a venture that is amenable
Building HubSpot to a Unicorn: Dharmesh Shah’s Amazing Entrepreneurial Journey (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: It’s not a bad thing to have a tough time raising Series A. Most likely, you’re doing something new. The market is not crawling with 27 other competitors. The problem with that 27 competitors trying to raise money for the same idea is that it’s very noisy. A noisy market is very difficult
Building HubSpot to a Unicorn: Dharmesh Shah’s Amazing Entrepreneurial Journey (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: One question that comes to my mind is how many of those existing tools were you able to bring into your product design in version one? Dharmesh Shah: We did it from scratch. Our thinking was that we could have tried taking WordPress and Google Analytics and integrate them into this larger platform,
Building HubSpot to a Unicorn: Dharmesh Shah’s Amazing Entrepreneurial Journey (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to your third chapter. What was the genesis of HubSpot? What was going on in the industry and in your life that led to HubSpot? Dharmesh Shah: HubSpot was not supposed to happen. When I sold my first company, I promised my wife that I’m not going to do startups anymore.
Building HubSpot to a Unicorn: Dharmesh Shah’s Amazing Entrepreneurial Journey (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Were you going to grad school with some money? Dharmesh Shah: The acquisition price was around $15 million. One thing I stumbled about money is that the first $4 or $5 million is life-changing. During undergrad, I was working full-time the whole way through. It took me seven years for what should ideally
Building HubSpot to a Unicorn: Dharmesh Shah’s Amazing Entrepreneurial Journey (Part 1)
Dharmesh discussed his entrepreneurial journey with candor, humility, and generosity. Wonderful conversation. If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page. Sramana Mitra: We will start at the very beginning of your journey. Where did you grow up? What kind of upbringing and what kind of circumstances were you raised in? I know
Bootstrapping for 30 Years: Dean Guida, CEO of Infragistics ( Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What was the next product shift? Dean Guida: We started investing more in marketing, PR, and sales. We rode a whole bunch of technology waves. We went from the C and C++ market and started competing in the Visual Basic market. We then started shifting to selling Visual Basic developers. That just opened
Bootstrapping for 30 Years: Dean Guida, CEO of Infragistics ( Part 6)
Dean Guida: A strategic event along the way was definitely PR. PR was important to get advocacy, authenticity, and having others say that we were legitimate. That was early on. I told you the story about Wendy’s. That was big for us. Second, I was speaking at software development shows. That was another big inflection
