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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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- Platform as a Service
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plivo
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Venky Balasubramanian, CEO of Plivo (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What, specifically, in terms of levers were you able to push by investing more aggressively? What could money buy you? Venky Balasubramanian: This was around technology at that point because we were in a market where we had to move fast in terms of what we were going to be releasing. Things were changing
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Venky Balasubramanian, CEO of Plivo (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: However, your per minute numbers are a premium over the carrier’s per minute numbers that you have to turn around and pay, right? Venky Balasubramanian: Technically, yes but not really. In practice if you go to a carrier directly, what you do in effect is a service running more than 10,000 minutes. Our price
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Venky Balasubramanian, CEO of Plivo (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: If I were making that decision, I would have made a different decision. If I had $15,000 to $20,000 coming from two customers, I would not raise angel financing and part with equity at that point. Venky Balasubramanian: I agree, which is why I’ll get to what we did a year later. A
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Venky Balasubramanian, CEO of Plivo (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Your business model was in providing consulting services, training, and support? Venky Balasubramanian: Back then, we had no plan to monetize. This was still a project for us. We had no business model. Sramana Mitra: You were based in Bangalore and Mike was based in France? Venky Balasubramanian: Yes, I was in Bangalore
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Venky Balasubramanian, CEO of Plivo (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: You didn’t have comparable functionality with Twilio? Venky Balasubramanian: We actually had better functionality back then in terms of what we launched and in the framework itself. We have a lot of incoming interest from customers of Twilio who liked what they saw. It was hard to believe for a lot of folks back
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Venky Balasubramanian, CEO of Plivo (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What specifically were each of you trying to do? Venky Balasubramanian: I was trying to pull ideas for my new startup back then. The first idea I had was a click-to-call. My co-founder was trying to build a framework for these IVRs. I was trying to build a framework to basically call to
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Venky Balasubramanian, CEO of Plivo (Part 1)
Venky has built a fast growing, profitable company with just $2 million in angel financing, raised as two convertible notes. Excellent navigation, and a lot to learn in the domain of smart, capital-efficient entrepreneurship. As we are bound to see the market crash in the upcoming quarters, these are the type of companies that will
