499th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Roberto Milk, NOVICA

Roberto Milk is CEO and Co-founder of NOVICA, a high-impact artisan marketplace. This is a terrific conversation about NOVICA’s work with artisans around the world.

Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How did your numbers track of the money that you sent to artisans as you went along? Roberto Milk: It took us 10 years to get to $25 million. It took us another four years to get to $50 million. We got to $50 million in June of 2014. Sramana Mitra: What is

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Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: When 9/11 hit, you were still operating with just that $6 million in funding? Roberto Milk: We had funding from National Geographic as well. Sramana Mitra: What was the cash portion of that? Roberto Milk: We don’t disclose that. It was cash and assets.

Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: This is before any venture capital. You’re still working with your $1.5 million angel round. Roberto Milk: No. In April of 2000, we did our first venture capital round. Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise?

Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It was going to be an artisan marketplace, right? Roberto Milk: That’s right. We were leaving these corporate positions for that. Sramana Mitra: How did you get your first set of artisans to come on board and start selling on the site?

Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do during those four years? Roberto Milk: I was working 100-hour weeks.  Sramana Mitra: You were doing this full-time before launching the site? Roberto Milk: I was learning as much as I could. I speak with entrepreneurs a lot and just try to think about how to codify this. First

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Building a High Impact Social Enterprise over 20+ Years: Roberto Milk, CEO of NOVICA (Part 1)

Not all high impact businesses need to go from 0 to $100 million in 5 to 7 years.  NOVICA has built a tremendously important, high impact social enterprise that did $30 million in 20 years. It’s a fantastic achievement.