Bootstrapping a Marketplace from Brazil: Diego Gomes, CEO of Rock Content (Part 1)

Diego has built a terrific content marketing company from Brazil. He bootstrapped first, raised money later, and has recently acquired a sizable US company to scale. Excellent story! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Tell me about your background. Where are you from? Where were you raised?

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the COVID Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You didn’t raise any financing? Is all this based on your personal investment in the advertising? Ammar Amdani: Yes.  Sramana Mitra: What is the customer acquisition cost? Could you talk about how much you are putting into advertising? What kind of equation have you been able to achieve?

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the COVID Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How are you acquiring customers? Ammar Amdani: I can tell you about our brand strategy and how we differentiate ourselves from hundreds of competitors. On the outside, it seems like an overcrowded space because a lot of people are targeting the space.

Bootstrapping to $8 Million in 3 Months During the Covid Crisis: Cuver CEO Ammar Amdani (Part 1)

This is a superb story of COVID-era entrepreneurship. Uplifting and thrilling! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The organic pull really drives the business?  Mareza Larizadeh: The great majority of our active subscribers have joined organically. They have either heard about us or their friends have invited them to join the platform. Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue land? It was bootstrapped mode going from 2012 when you started this?

Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the kind of experiences and the kind of people who started gravitating towards your platform, making this a financially viable business.  Mareza Larizadeh: We started partnering with mom-and-pop shops to drive customers their way. We would structure offers. A dinner offer or a brunch offer for example, which we

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Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about the genesis of the new company.  Mareza Larizadeh: I’ve been coming to New York for a couple of decades now. When I graduated school, I spent a lot of time here for my job in early 2000’s. I was here a lot in the late 2000’s for my old

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Hit by Covid in New York: Pulsd CEO Mareza Larizadeh (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did that grow? Mareza Larizadeh: It went surprisingly well. We turned the shift around overnight. We had a lot of opportunities on the platform. We went ahead and built something that had 80% of the job description without giving away which company was recruiting.