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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
Building a Retail Business in India: Manish Sharma, CEO of Printo (Part 2)
Sramana: Why would the National Stock Exchange commission ask you to build a mission critical transaction system? Did you have credentials to gain their confidence? Manish Sharma: They were not our first customer. We were able to build a good portfolio before we started working on those high profile projects. Our first customer was Indian
Building a Retail Business in India: Manish Sharma, CEO of Printo (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Manish Sharma is the co-founder and CEO of Printo, a Bangalore, India-based company specializing in high quality printing. Manish is a serial entrepreneur who began his career in 1995 as an early member of the startup team at Rediff.com. He went on to be the co-founder of DBS Internet
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 7)
Sramana: What does your management team look like today? Varun Shoor: We have four members of our senior management team. Raghav Arora is our VP of Operations. He was the first employee of Kayako and was a school mate of mine. He has helped the company grow from inception. James Edwards is based out of
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 6)
Sramana: How much have you been able to accomplish with your new engineering team when it comes to maturing your product? Varun Shoor: I personally believe the product is evolving. Our engineering practices can still use additional maturing although my teams believe we have evolved to a point where we are able to really leverage
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 5)
Sramana: Did your dad mentor you or help you as you were starting Kayako? Varun Shoor: I went to him for feedback but the feedback he was able to give was from a different industry. He was accustomed to dealing with factory laborers. Apart from that, he did help me when it came to managing
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 4)
Sramana: Let’s drill down into how you built the company. What were the milestones in the early development of Kayako? Varun Shoor: As the business started picking up, I started to recognize what was important to continued growth. The most important aspect was trust. In 2002, if someone emailed support@kayako.com and expressed interest in buying
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 3)
Sramana: How did the business ramp in 2002? Varun Shoor: It was quite interesting. I started receiving money at the very end of 2001, and then it kept coming in 2002. I kept telling my mom and dad that I had just earned $1,000 and they would not believe me. They made me show them
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 2)
Sramana: When did you learn to program? Varun Shoor: I learned to program when I was 13. We had x286 and x386 computers, so I started learning FoxPro and Visual FoxPro. This was in 1996. My father had a spare computer from his factory, so he gave it to me. I did not get a
