
Udemy has over six million students who are learning Machine Learning on the platform. Many of these students are aspiring entrepreneurs.
Here is a list of Udemy entrepreneurship courses based on the 1Mby1M methodology that would help them put one foot before the other to get a startup strategy figured out.
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If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Adding to our roster of Bootstrapping Using Services case studies, here’s my conversation with PMG Founders Joe LeCompte and Robert Castles from 2015.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Tell us a bit about where you come from, where you were born and raised, and in what kind of background.
Robert Castles: I was born in Columbia, South Carolina. I spent the first half of my life there through to college. I have always been interested in technology as early as I can remember. When I was 11 years old, I begged my father for a Radio Shack Color Computer so that I could take it home and learn how to program. This is while all my friends were looking for baseball mitts, which I also like. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for that computer, which I got.

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Our tried-and-true mantra of Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later rings throughout Dave Elkington’s story. As the Founder of InsideSales.com, he used services to bootstrap a Unicorn that had raised close to $140 million in VC funding when we spoke in 2015. Revenue was scaling 100% year over year then.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised, and in what kind of circumstances?
Dave Elkington: I grew up in Utah. I went to school here. My parents are both school teachers and worked for the state and federal government. It was a little bit atypical. My dad was a rancher growing up in Idaho. My mom is from Canada. When people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell them I wanted to be a millionaire. They would ask why. I’d be like, “Not for the money, but purely for the sake of accomplishment of being able to do that.” I went to school locally. My education is a little bit eclectic. I have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy. I also have minors in Hebrew, Japanese History, and Business. I also studied, for about a year, in Israel. I decided I wanted to go get some international experience and I had family in Israel. I dropped out of school at BYU and applied to the Hebrew University. I got accepted and transferred credits. I did that for a little over a year, dropped out of school, and applied to BYU. I got re-accepted and then finished at BYU.

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Yet another case study of a services company successfully bootstrapping a product, then raising Venture Capital. Here is my conversation with Bill Moschella, Co-founder of Evariant, from 2015.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s begin at the beginning of your personal story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What’s the back story of your entrepreneurial story?
Bill Moschella: I was born and raised in Connecticut. I attended college at Berklee and eventually got my degree. What I was passionate about all of my life was music. I went to music school and graduated with a music degree. I left college playing music in a band and opened up a recording studio. I never really had a job. I was always playing music. I was running bands. I found that I had a passion for the engineering side of music so I opened up a recording studio. I took all the money that I saved up from gigs.

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Chuck Bloomquist bootstrapped a security company using services all the way up to $16 million in revenue and then raised private equity capital to develop a platform product. Since we spoke in 2015, InteliSecure was acquired by Proofpoint.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? What kind of background leads up to this story?
Chuck Bloomquist: I was born in El Paso, Texas. I spent most of my youth living in the Pacific Basin. After we moved out of Texas, we moved to Wake Island. Then, we went to Hawaii and lived there for a year or so. Then, we moved up to Alaska and the UK. I came back to Texas for college. I then migrated to Colorado.

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
iText CEO Bruno Lowagie bootstrapped a highly profitable company from Belgium. Since our conversation in 2015, iText was acquired by ThinkFree in 2018.
Sramana Mitra: Where are you from?
Bruno Lowagie: I’m from Belgium.

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Continuing with our theme of Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, here is Founder William King’s story of bootstrapping Zephyr Health, a robust company in the healthcare industry. This strategy led to funding by Kleiner Perkins by the time we spoke in 2015. Zephyr Health was acquired in 2018 by Anju Software.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances?
William King: I was born in Princeton, New Jersey. I lived in Princeton until I was 18. I’m the oldest of six children. That’s a little bit unique in that we had a lot of action in the house. The age span was actually a difference of 10 years, which was pretty interesting and pretty heroic, now that I’m a parent myself. As a child, part of my experience in growing up was leading my siblings and helping them to participate. Kids look up to their older brothers and sisters. A lot of what was instilled in me at a very young age is this notion of making good choices, collaboration, and the idea that people are paying attention to the things that you’re doing.

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.
Conversocial Founder Josh March first built a digital marketing agency around social media before identifying the product opportunity for Conversocial. Here is our conversation from 2015.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised, and in what kind of background?
Joshua March: I grew up in a relatively small town in England, a few hours outside of London. It’s called Malvern, Worcestershire. It’s famous for classical music composer Elgar. It has beautiful hills and countryside. It’s a lovely place to grow up but not completely exciting from a business perspective or the perspective of a 16-year-old.