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jason robbins
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: The scenario that you are pointing out is a scenario that a lot of venture-funded entrepreneurs face. Business is not the rocket that the VCs thought it would be, but it’s a healthy profitable long-term business that the entrepreneur may be interested in running. That’s a scenario where VCs and entrepreneurs have to
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: You had a $5 million round. You were pretty much profitable. What are some of the major inflection points? Jason Robbins: The $5 million basically almost disappeared. By the time money came in, the investors wanted a CEO that was known in the marketplace so they then can then raise the next round
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: On the website, you would provide the designs that your suppliers were able to build against. You would provide that catalog and fulfill through that supplier network. Jason Robbins: Exactly right. You would come to my website and you’d say I like that. You would upload your logo. I would send your logo
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 4)
Jason Robbins: Eventually, I took a little bit of what I knew from the promotional products business and a little bit of what I knew from catalogs and the website I wanted to build, and I started ePromos.com. That was a business that was designed to create a website with merchandise and start finding the
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Why did you want to do that? That made no sense to me. Jason Robbins: I know. I just felt that it was tough out there. Real estate is the long-term play. Now, I’m basically chasing a stock I sold. If I stayed at Goldman Sachs and didn’t bother about getting my MBA and
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 2)
Jason Robbins: Frankly, I didn’t like my job. It was very clerical. I wanted to do more higher-end things that required me to think. More than one time, I was told, “You’re paid to do and not think.” I really wanted to improve my job and improve the organization. When they’re making $20 million a
Buying Control Back from VCs: Jason Robbins, CEO of ePromos (Part 1)
Jason raised both angel round and a VC round early on, but eventually, the company turned out to be a good, solid, profitable business, but not the kind of rocket VCs like to fund. Read how he negotiated with them to gain control of the venture. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of
