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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Awesome Journey from Austin, Texas: Jason Cohen, CTO of WP Engine (Part 5)

Posted on Saturday, Jun 4th

Sramana Mitra: Being the author of a book gives you huge credibility. Jason Cohen: Even now when everyone knows you can publish, it does. We were doing enterprise sales where credibility is even more important. I remember being with a potential customer in San Diego. Our champion inside the company threw one of our books

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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Awesome Journey from Austin, Texas: Jason Cohen, CTO of WP Engine (Part 4)

Posted on Friday, Jun 3rd

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go down the path of your content marketing. You said you published a book. Tell us more about what was the marketing strategy around your code review product? Jason Cohen: I have to give credit where credit is due. In ITWatchDogs, Gerry had this idea because it had just become possible to

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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Awesome Journey from Austin, Texas: Jason Cohen, CTO of WP Engine (Part 3)

Posted on Thursday, Jun 2nd

Sramana Mitra: Did you go to work for them? Jason Cohen: I did for just a little while, but at that time, I had already started another company with Gerry’s encouragement. In fact, when we started ITWatchDogs, I was hesitant to join a startup because I thought, “Maybe I should just increase my savings a little

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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Awesome Journey from Austin, Texas: Jason Cohen, CTO of WP Engine (Part 1)

Posted on Tuesday, May 31st

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Jason has done three bootstrapped startups, sold two of those, and then bootstrapped a fourth one to heavy duty venture financing. This is a great interview with a pro who knows what he is doing at many levels. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning

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Serial Entrepreneur from Alberta, Canada: Michael Sikorsky, CEO of Robots and Pencils (Part 7)

Posted on Sunday, Dec 6th

Sramana Mitra: What do you do? Michael Sikorsky: I happened to be in New York. I was connected to lots of stuff around investing and crowdsourcing to venture capital. The iPhone comes out. I had that lightning bolt feeling when the Internet came out. Now, I’m a lot older. I’ve been through multiple companies. I even

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Serial Entrepreneur from Alberta, Canada: Michael Sikorsky, CEO of Robots and Pencils (Part 6)

Posted on Saturday, Dec 5th

Sramana Mitra: I got it. How many people did you have in the company that you were essentially renting out? Michael Sikorsky: It was very fast. It went from 0 to 65 people in nine months. Sramana Mitra: Then you sold the company to whom? Michael Sikorsky: To my business partner. It was almost like

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Serial Entrepreneur from Alberta, Canada: Michael Sikorsky, CEO of Robots and Pencils (Part 5)

Posted on Friday, Dec 4th

Sramana Mitra: Give me the chronology of it. You didn’t mention raising money at any of these points. Michael Sikorsky: I raised right away as I started the company. Sramana Mitra: In Alberta? Michael Sikorsky: Yes, in Alberta. I presented to 11 investors when I was 22. Just to tell you a neat story there, the

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Serial Entrepreneur from Alberta, Canada: Michael Sikorsky, CEO of Robots and Pencils (Part 4)

Posted on Thursday, Dec 3rd

Sramana Mitra: This is a very common scenario in technologies trying to start their first ventures. They end up building technology, which essentially turns out to be a solution looking for a problem to solve. How did you maneuver out of that situation? Michael Sikorsky: As you’re in that situation, you can feel it but you

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