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HOT TOPICS
- 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
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 4)
Sramana: Let’s drill down into how you built the company. What were the milestones in the early development of Kayako? Varun Shoor: As the business started picking up, I started to recognize what was important to continued growth. The most important aspect was trust. In 2002, if someone emailed support@kayako.com and expressed interest in buying
Thought Leaders in Online Education: Jim Donohue, Chief Product Officer, Cengage Learning (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Cengage is one of the three major publishers of educational texts and materials. In this interview, we explore a range of trends in higher education with Jim Donohue, their Chief Product Officer. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start, Jim, with an introduction for our audience to Cengage and
Bootstrapping an App to $10 Million in Revenue: Christophe Bach, CEO of TextMe (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. This is a wonderful story of a self-financed company that has built itself up to $10 million in profitable revenue. Led by Christophe Bach, an experienced and successful serial entrepreneur, it’s a text-book case study of effective bootstrapping. Sramana: Christophe, to start, tell me your back
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 3)
Sramana: How did the business ramp in 2002? Varun Shoor: It was quite interesting. I started receiving money at the very end of 2001, and then it kept coming in 2002. I kept telling my mom and dad that I had just earned $1,000 and they would not believe me. They made me show them
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 2)
Sramana: When did you learn to program? Varun Shoor: I learned to program when I was 13. We had x286 and x386 computers, so I started learning FoxPro and Visual FoxPro. This was in 1996. My father had a spare computer from his factory, so he gave it to me. I did not get a
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. [Also check out my Entrepreneur Journeys book, Seed India – How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India] Varun Shoor is the founder and CEO of Kayako, a company offering advanced helpdesk management software. Varun steers the overall direction of the company and as customer experience fanatic and lead
Solo Founder, Bootstrapping to $7 Million in India: Wingify CEO Paras Chopra (Part 7)
Sramana: What are your primary customer acquisition methods? Paras Chopra: We are starting to do a mix of marketing and sales. For the longest time we focused solely on our content marketing. We have tried AdWords, Salesforce and even LinkedIn marketing programs. What has worked for us is content marketing. Sramana: This is the case
Solo Founder, Bootstrapping to $7 Million in India: Wingify CEO Paras Chopra (Part 6)
Sramana: It sounds like you had a very good conversion rate. Paras Chopra: The conversion rate was around 10%. I also got some hate mail from users who expected the product to be free forever. They told me I should be ashamed of myself for charging money and pointed out that Google’s products were free.