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
Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: You think the unemployment pay from the government is preventing people from looking for jobs? Jan Bednar: 100%. People told us that on the phone. We called people from our database. Their mentality is, “Why would I work if I can make more money not working and I’m safe?” It’s a tough argument.
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that we should discuss about that bootstrapping period before we switch into the next inflection point? John Baker: One thing I would like to discuss is how we differentiated from the competition. In my case, I spent a lot of time on the engineering and design side.
Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Where in California did you open? Jan Bednar: In Redlands. It’s a DisneyLand warehouse. We were hiring new people and trying to keep the culture. It was a lot of fun. The first couple of years was really tough. Then in 2018, we went from $11 million to $28 million. We moved to
Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Shopify has done one of the most aggressive and successful PaaS strategies where they have invited developers to develop and extend their platform. Did you take advantage of that with your software? Did you integrate with the Shopify platform? Was the Shopify marketplace a good source of leads for you? Jan Bednar: That
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: The sales model at this point is still direct selling? John Baker: Yes, still the same. It had expanded into going to conferences to figure out who to talk to. Now we were talking to Deans or Provosts. Sramana Mitra: How was the average deal size moving?
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: In the very beginning, when you were going door to door asking people to sign up, what were you charging? John Baker: In the early days, I built a model that was based on cost per student. The faculty members that I reached out to didn’t have the budget for this. I said,
Capital Efficient Startup, Venture-Scale Growth: ShipMonk CEO Jan Bednar (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Did you choose the first few customers by some threshold? Were they doing a certain amount of business already? Jan Bednar: It was almost the opposite. They were companies that nobody wanted to do business with. A lot of the fulfillment companies in 2015 didn’t want to work with small startups because they
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, Build an EdTech Unicorn from Canada: John Baker, CEO of D2L (Part 1)
This is a terrific story of bootstrapped entrepreneurship in EdTech. The company also has a great PaaS strategy. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
