Building a Cyber Security Company from Israel: Aki Eldar, CEO of Secure Islands (Part 1)

Security is the venture industry’s most active segment. It is also the most crowded segment, and unless you have deep domain knowledge, you cannot play in the business. Aki and his brother do have deep domain knowledge and have leveraged that to build an exciting company.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Aki Eldar: I was born in Israel more than 50 years ago. I’m just past 50. Like any typical Israeli, I graduated high school, moved to military and finished my military duties. I also worked for the Israeli government for a few years. Then, I graduated with a Bachelor in Management and Economics and started my journey in the high tech industry.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you finish your education and enter the industry? >>>

Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I didn’t find studying engineering boring at all.

Varun Singh: The guys at PC Quest were so exciting. It probably wasn’t boring, but I started working with people who were a little too exciting at that point in time.

Sramana Mitra: At 18, you were in Mumbai working for Chip Magazine. How long did that go on?

Varun Singh: I was there for about three and a half years.

Sramana Mitra: That brings us up to what year?

Varun Singh: I joined them in January 2002. >>>

Do It For Me Analytics: Anil Kaul, CEO of Absolutdata (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We’re noticing a trend that I have written about in the past: SaaS-enabled BPO, also called Do It For Me (DIFM) technologies. The interview discusses the trend in some depth. Other stories on the subject include our case studies of AthenaHealth, Sabrix, and LatentView Analytics.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised and in what kind of background?

Anil Kaul: I was born and raised in India.

Sramana Mitra: Where in India?

Anil Kaul: I was born in Kashmir. >>>

Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

There are very few true technology product companies out of India that have made it to the global market. Varun Singh founded one of them, ScaleArc. The company is currently headquartered in Silicon Valley and is executing well. Some of the others are: Druva, InMobi, and Freshdesk.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where you were born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Varun Singh: I’m from the north of India. I was raised in Chandigarh before I left and started working.

Sramana Mitra: Did you do all your schooling in Chandigarh?

Varun Singh: A majority of it. I travelled around a bit but pretty much, a few hundred miles of Chandigarh. >>>

Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 1)

We have covered quite a few Utah companies already like Pluralsight, InsideSales, and Steals.com. Here is another interesting entrepreneurial story out of the mini tech startup hub in Utah.

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 background?

Andy Gotshalk: I’m originally from Boston. I was born and raised there and also finished high school there. I went on to college at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. What I really wanted was Biomedical Engineering but at that time, there weren’t that many schools that offered a Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering. At Georgia Tech, I could pick either Mechanical or Electrical Engineering and then get a certificate in Bioengineering. I officially had a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Certificate in Bioengineering. >>>

Building a Founding Team Financed Business from Omaha, Nebraska: InfoFree CEO Rakesh Gupta (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Internet marketing is your primary channel?

Rakesh Gupta: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of segments and where you found the most adoption, what segments are you seeing the maximum revenue from?

Rakesh Gupta: After that initial journey into financial services and insurance, what we are finding is that we have a very broad set of customers. Anybody who is a little savvy or who wants to be a little savvy about their sales and marketing is a potential customer for us. Now, we are not limited to any one or two verticals but we have a very broad base of customers. We are selling something that has a fairly wide application as I can’t imagine any business that doesn’t want to grow. We think around 5 million business owners will be a good prospect for us. That’s the market size we want to go after. >>>

Building a Founding Team Financed Business from Omaha, Nebraska: InfoFree CEO Rakesh Gupta (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of customer acquisition, what customer base did you go after? There’s a bit of a subtlety in that question. Typically, in data services like yours, you tend to have richer data in one particular area or a few particular areas. What was that segmentation that you went with at the beginning?

Rakesh Gupta: At the beginning, we went after the insurance and financial services segment. They had the paying capacity and they had a serious need. A lot of them belonged to larger companies but they had local authorization to spend money. The price of our product was such that they didn’t even have to get approval in any way. They can just pay it from their own pocket. We used every form of marketing that you can think of to get to them, including direct mail. That worked really well for us. That’s where the early success came from.

Sramana Mitra: Were your customers looking for B2B or B2C sales leads? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: eMazzanti CEO Carl Mazzanti (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What scale are you at now?

Carl Mazzanti: We’ve been in the middle of the pack of the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies for the last five years. We hit $7 million in 2014 and we’re on track for revenue between $9 and $10 million this year. If we continue this for the next 15 years as we have for the last 15 years, we’ll reach $100 million in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: When you think about what you want to do with this company that you’ve created, what’s your aspiration?

Carl Mazzanti: You’re talking to someone who gets votes from our customers on a daily basis for their confidence in our ability to deliver. I would like to see our firm get to a 100 million votes on an annual basis. The next thing is I do see us expanding into more offices that are geographically close to the offices that are important for our customer base. >>>