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- The Startup Velocity Question
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Best of Bootstrapping: Serial Entrepreneur Bootstrapped First, Raised Funds Later
JobNimbus Co-founder and CEO Ben Hodson is a serial entrepreneur with a long experience in bootstrapping and fundraising. He shared how he has navigated his journey with me in 2021. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background
From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to come up with a product? Manish Jethani: This is very interesting. We signed an agreement with one customer that if we deliver that product, they will pay us $50,000. Sramana Mitra: What kind of customer? Manish Jethani: This was the largest food-tech delivery company in India.
From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: When you launched this, how did you get it off the ground? The problem you’re describing is a very large problem and there are a lot of people working on this. Data, as you know, has become one of the biggest categories in which people are doing startups. The combination of data and
From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: You were doing a hosted product until recently. Francis Dinha: Yes. Even Bloomberg came to us. They said, “What about if we license your software? We pay you half a million dollars one time.” I said no. Our model is subscription. Google was our customer for three years. They used our self-hosted solution.
From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: What did you do next? Manish Jethani: It was a very comfortable role, but that comfort was making me uncomfortable. I was used to solving problems. I wanted to go back and do a startup again. Being well-positioned in a well-funded startup didn’t bring any additional challenge of sorts. I wanted to go
From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What was the current problem that you could solve in 2005? Francis Dinha: One of my friends started a company in Dallas. They were trying to solve the problem of circumventing the firewall. They raised about $35 million. He said, “How are we going to solve this problem?” I got this technology that’s
From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Why do you think the VC was calling you? What did he know about what you were doing? Manish Jethani: Some local newspaper caught the Facebook post in the group. They saw that we got 1,700 signups in four hours. She wrote a story around that. That got us a bit of media
From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What did you do in your first venture? Francis Dinha: I gave Ericsson three months’ notice. I was going to build something related to switching while doing everything in software. That was my first venture where I made my first million dollars. Sramana Mitra: Who was the customer?