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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
Indian Services Entrepreneurs Venturing Into Products: Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri, CoFounders of Crayon Data (Part 4)
Sramana: It sounds like this dose of reality was good for your soul. It helped you get back down to the ground. Srikant Sastri: Absolutely. That is why as Suresh and I set up our business, today I play the role of the background voice reminding us of the need to preserve our cash. That
Indian Services Entrepreneurs Venturing Into Products: Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri, CoFounders of Crayon Data (Part 3)
Sramana: Srikant, what was the premise of the business that you were looking to start? Srikant Sastri: I still carry copies of the formal business plan I wrote at that time. It was 1995, and the early signs of the technology boom in India was there. Telecom was present and IT was starting to flutter.
Indian Services Entrepreneurs Venturing Into Products: Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri, CoFounders of Crayon Data (Part 2)
Sramana: Srikant, what is your background? Srikant Sastri: When I was young I studied every possible subject in Hindi. Aside from math and science, which have an English influence, all of my other studies such as history, civics, and geography where all in Hindi. English is not a native language for me. I grew up
Indian Services Entrepreneurs Venturing Into Products: Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri, CoFounders of Crayon Data (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Suresh Shankar is the Founder Director at Crayon Data. Prior to founding Crayon Data he held various positions at IBM, RedPill Solutions, ANN AMRO Bank, Young & Rubicon, and JWT Fulcrum. He was the CEO at RedPill which was sold to IBM in 2009. Srikant Sastri
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 7)
Sramana: That is the beauty of having a really solid set of customer relationships over a long period of time. They trust you and your expertise and are able to participate in the product definition process. That is a huge asset. Hemant Shah: It is a tremendous benefit. I have only worked in this startup.
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 6)
Sramana: What do you need to build these models in terms of data sets? How do you derive them? Hemant Shah: The thing that we really stayed true to was recognizing what our core competency was and was not. When we made the shift from earthquake risk to natural hazard risk, we knew that we
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 5)
Sramana: Most CEO changes fail miserably. Most VCs will tell you that they want an entrepreneur who will scale up to a certain point. They do not want a CEO change right out of the gate. Most of the relationships don’t work out, but you obviously were successful. What did he do that made it
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 4)
Sramana: Did you ever pursue venture funding? Hemant Shah: We were able to get venture funding in 1992. That was our first proper round of funding which allowed us to build out the business. Sramana: How many customers did you have before you were able to get venture funding? Hemant Shah: We initially had five