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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
security
Building a Mobile Security Company in Silicon Valley: Domingo Guerra, Co-Founder and President of Appthority (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Domingo came into the market at a time when his original value proposition to enterprises wasn’t that urgent. Over time, however, the mobile security challenge has grown into a critical issue, and now the company is thriving. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of
Bootstrapping Lessons: FairWarning CEO Kurt Long (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: You did not go to the channel and try to convince them to sell your product. You generated market demand first. This is very much the methodology that we teach as well. That’s a good strategic point to highlight. Are there other pieces that you want to discuss? Kurt Long: There are many
Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Also, your sales cycle was already in full swing. If there are 100 customers engaged in the developing of the product, that means that as soon as the product is ready, a good percentage of those are ready to buy. If you have product–market fit, a good percentage of those are ready to buy.
Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: When you started to get this thing off the ground, anecdotally and structurally, what were the next steps? Andrew Rubin: PJ and I probably first had to figure out whether or not we like each other enough to spend more time together. I know that sounds silly now in hindsight, but when you
Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: You were able to find people with experience in Prague? Vince Steckler: Not too successfully. For the most part, what we did was transplant people. For example, I brought over my old deputy from Symantec to run sales. He ran sales out of Prague for two or three years and groomed one of
Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: You were able to cater to all that from Prague? Vince Steckler: Both from Prague and the community. Prague is very cosmopolitan. We can do a lot of support and customization but what’s most important is the community. Most users don’t realize where the company is from. Brazilians tend to think the company
Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Tell me how you got there. Vince Steckler: It’s basically a few things. When the company went into France, we started at the community side. The competition in France at that time had English language products, which doesn’t really go very real well in France. So we built a French language product. Since
Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 4)
Vince Steckler: It was very intriguing because it was a very engineering-oriented company. Of the 40 people, there was one person in Finance, one person in Marketing and Sales, and 38 engineers. They weren’t doing very good business because there wasn’t anyone paying attention to it. I actually joined there taking what people would probably consider
