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HOT TOPICS
- 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
Thought leaders in Online Education: Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC Irvine (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Gary Matkin has been involved with open education from the beginning. Here, he discusses the current issues and predicts the demise of Moocs. Read on for a fascinating insight into the future of open education. Sramana: Gary, let’s set some context for our readers. Could you
Building a Pre-IPO Company Over 10 Years: Centrify CEO Tom Kemp (Part 7)
Sramana: How did the business ramp from 2004 onwards? Tom Kemp: The ramp has been really good. We formed the company in 2004 and we did not ship product until 2005. We did over $1 million in our first calendar year. The next year we grew to $3 million. In 2007, we grew it to
Building a Pre-IPO Company Over 10 Years: Centrify CEO Tom Kemp (Part 6)
Sramana: What is your algorithm for determining how big your TAM is? When you explore a new product idea, how large does the TAM have to be for that product to make it viable? Tom Kemp: People get lulled into repeating what analysts or others say about the market. If an analyst says there is
Building a Pre-IPO Company Over 10 Years: Centrify CEO Tom Kemp (Part 5)
Sramana: You have obviously been in business for a while and have built a company based on multiple products. What is the process to figure out product positioning? Tom Kemp: You obviously have to listen to your customers. Often, customers have their heads down and while you may make them happier, they are not thinking
Building a Pre-IPO Company Over 10 Years: Centrify CEO Tom Kemp (Part 4)
Sramana: At that time, what were you proposing with your elevator pitch? Tom Kemp: At a high level, it is what we are doing now. The general idea is that as the world gets more heterogeneous from an IT perspective, it introduces complexity with multiple logins and difficulty for IT to control access. If you
Building a Pre-IPO Company Over 10 Years: Centrify CEO Tom Kemp (Part 3)
Sramana: There are a lot of companies today that are bootstrapped with very small amounts of capital. Some of them raise capital later and others don’t. The big change is that you can’t go public with a $20 million company anymore. Tom Kemp: No, you can’t. You have to be a lot bigger now. When
Building a Pre-IPO Company Over 10 Years: Centrify CEO Tom Kemp (Part 2)
Sramana: I remember NetIQ very well, but a lot of my readers may not. Could you review the premise under which you founded NetIQ? Tom Kemp: NetIQ was a systems management company around the Windows platform. At that time Microsoft had come out with Windows server and they were coming out with server applications such
Building a Pre-IPO Company Over 10 Years: Centrify CEO Tom Kemp (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Tom Kemp founded Centrify in 2004 with a PowerPoint financing of $7 million. The company managed to survive the terrible recession of the late 2000 decade and is on its way to an IPO. Here, Tom discusses the highlights of his journey. Sramana: Tom, to begin,