Do You Agree With Peter Thiel?

I don’t. On a number of issues. Most of all: Don’t play little ball—swing for home runs.

Over 99% of the businesses that seek financing get rejected. Asking every entrepreneur to swing for the fences is dumb advice, in my opinion.

Acc. to Peter, a small idea = bad idea.

I couldn’t disagree more.

I just published Bootstrapping With A Paycheck, where we have case study after case study of businesses that have been successful by starting small, taking small amounts of risk, and developing very nice businesses.

Sorry Peter, I don’t get why every entrepreneur needs to swing for the fences.

Your thoughts?

Building a Healthcare IT Company out of Georgia: Reach Health Founder Grant Kohler (Part 2)

Grant Kohler: By the time they would get into the medical center, they would be outside that window of treatment for this particular drug. The Department of Neurology was investigating how to treat these patients out in their home communities and treat them fast enough so that they will still be within this three-hour window for this drug to be administered.

We started looking at different technologies. The reality is that the doctors need to be able to see and talk to the patient, and see medical imaging around that patient to make this decision of giving this particular drug to the patient. Conceptually, that’s how it started in the Medical College of Georgia (MCG). This was around 2002. Between 2002 and 2005, we did an alpha project. We

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Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO, Phil Copeland (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Where do you sell? Do you sell primarily in Australia or do you sell globally?

Phil Copeland: Australia is a great marketplace because they’re very early adopters of technology. Very early on, we recognized that to really succeed in this industry, you need to become an American-established business and you need to have a lot of the momentum behind your business here in North America. I’m actually based in Colorado. We have an office here. I spend about 80% of my time here helping grow and expand our North American business. We also have a small operation in the UK that has been very successful as well. Our core focus is really getting to critical size here in North America, because we realized that the exit events that may occur in the future will be from an American company.

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Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I think there is that, but there’s also a process that you have articulated very clearly. We have seen this process come up many times. This process of following a product that is somewhat successful in the market and doing this kind of system integration and value-added reseller work on top of it so that you basically simmer in customer scenarios. Where the art comes in is to figure out which problem can give you enough of an opportunity to build a real product and a business out of it.

Phil Copeland: You learn as you go. The big waves that have changed over my 25 or 30 years is obviously that whole launch of the PC industry and the opportunities that it created and the client server computing revolution. These are big changes in the industry and have had major impacts. I missed out on the Internet revolution when it first came along, but then the launch of tablets and iPad just had a profound impact on the way that everybody does business.

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New Book Launch – Bootstrapping With A Paycheck

Here is an excerpt from my new book on sale today, Bootstrapping With A Paycheck:

Entrepreneurs looking to launch their startups are often faced with myriad difficult decisions, chief among them being the question of seed financing. If you’ve ever found yourself asking, “How can I fund this?” or “Can I fund this on my own, while I’m still holding my current job?” the answer is yes—you absolutely can.

Vasu Akula and his two cofounders launched Voziq in late 2011 with one simple goal in mind: to help companies who purchase advanced analytics and business intelligence solutions better utilize the information they gained access to.

What makes Washington, D.C.-based Voziq unique is that Vasu and his partners didn’t utilize outside investors in order to bring Voziq to life. Rather, they funded Voziq themselves while holding on to their day jobs. Vasu is a part of the 1M/1M premium program, and one of the many entrepreneurs who have bootstrapped a startup venture while holding on to a full-time day job.
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Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that?

Phil Copeland: There were a lot of lessons learned out of that. First of all, the original business was self-funded and was grown out of cash flow. Spot On was my first venture capital-based business, and it was also started in San Francisco. That was a really interesting experience. After that, I returned with my family to Sydney and once again, spent a bit of time wanting to start another technology business. I wanted one that was self-funded because after the dot-com boom, it was much harder to raise capital. Frankly, I was looking for a new idea for business that we could self-fund. It needed to earn money pretty much from the outset. >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Is anything else interesting in your story? I find it fascinating. It’s great that you did this from Switzerland. It’s a very interesting angle that you figured out very early on in the history of the Internet. It’s wonderful to see that.

Samy Liechti: I think I have a message to all new and future entrepreneurs. I saw so many very nice detailed business plans. I think the most important thing is to start a business. The second message is it will be hard, but it’s worth it.

Sramana Mitra: You have chosen to bootstrap this company right? Right now, you’re at what level of revenue? >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In Switzerland, how do you market for your kind of offering? How much could you grow in Switzerland?

Samy Liechti: In the socks segment, we now have 20% market share. With 20% market share, we can grow up to 30% to 35%, but we will never dominate the whole market. We started about two years ago to invest more marketing money outside our country. It seems to be working.

Sramana Mitra: Now that you’re investing outside of Switzerland, in terms of geographies, where are you putting your marketing dollars? >>>