How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after college?

Ned Hill: I had a painting company while in college. That was successful and there was a person who heard about me and recruited me to help them figure out how to clean shoes. This is a crazy story. They had these huge crates of shoes that had mildew all over them. They recruited me to see if I can figure it out.

How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging (Part 1)

I seldom get to interview an entrepreneur who is candid about his mistakes. Yet, people tend to learn more from failures than from successes.

In this story, you will see how Ned built technology looking for a problem to solve, an absolute no no.
You will also see the negative impact of not validating your product idea upfront.

Read on. This is a unique interview.

Blocking Ransomware at the Hard Drive Level: John Benkert, CEO of Cigent (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you did the spin off and InQTel was part of that process, were they aware of the kind of go-to-market that you were going to pursue?

John Benkert: We explained what we wanted to do and why we wanted to do it. They were great partners and gave us great feedback.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise from InQTel?

Blocking Ransomware at the Hard Drive Level: John Benkert, CEO of Cigent (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down on what you said. I get the sense that you have a company where you were experimenting with some technology. You were experimenting with how to protect data. Explain more about the technology.

Blocking Ransomware at the Hard Drive Level: John Benkert, CEO of Cigent (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You retired from the Air Force and decided to do your own company.

John Benkert: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What were you going to offer and to whom?

Blocking Ransomware at the Hard Drive Level: John Benkert, CEO of Cigent (Part 1)

Ransomware is a key Cyber Security challenge that drives enterprises and governments crazy. John has built a very interesting company to address this problem with a unique approach and lots of patented Intellectual Property. In this case study, you will also learn a lot about Go To Market Strategy through Firmware.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised? What kind of background?

Bootstrapping with Services at the Cusp of AI and FinTech: Vahe Andonians, Founder of Cognaize (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. You’re doing almost like an AI fintech incubator where you’re doing services projects for large companies. Those are exclusive. The datasets are on their premises. You’re not touching them, but you’re building the models for them. Then you’re taking the knowledge and turning them into SaaS that you take to the midmarket.

Vahe Andonians: It is correct, but not that we’re learning from the data and selling that. We develop our platform and we sell it.

Bootstrapping with Services at the Cusp of AI and FinTech: Vahe Andonians, Founder of Cognaize (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Now we’re in 2017?

Vahe Andonians: 2018.

Sramana Mitra: What problem were you going to solve next?

Vahe Andonians: It all started with Moody’s. They approached me with a problem. The problem was extracting financial PDF. They had identified this as a pain point of the market. They had just created a unit called Moody’s Accelerator which was trying new ideas and products. They approached me along with others and asked us if we can automate it.