Featured Videos

Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

Andrew Rubin: It was in 1998 that I graduated from university.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you work in the first job?

Andrew Rubin: I stayed in my first job for under five years.

Sramana Mitra: This brings us to about 2003 then?

Andrew Rubin: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What happens then? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much did you sell it for?

Todd Dunlop: Unfortunately, I can’t disclose that.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve made a substantial amount of money in that exit so that whatever you then chose to do next, you had capital available?

Todd Dunlop: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: What was the next venture?

Todd Dunlop: From there, I created a company called BetaStreet. The idea behind BetaStreet is I use it to either invest in or start a unique company. My philosophy that took me a while to get to is, if there’s something that I’m interested in, then that’s a great opportunity for me to invest. If it’s something that I’m passionate about, then that’s an opportunity for me to be a partner or to be involved in. >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was going to be the new company? What did you find that warrants doing another company?

Chris Grandi: This is one thing that I always tell the entrepreneurs I speak to. You always hear about entrepreneurs who start a company when they’re super young and don’t have a lot of experience, and they’re successful. That happens but ultimately, I’ve always believed that if you do something long enough, you get smart in it and get domain experience. Your risk of success is much greater.

I saw a better technical solution to the previous company. I believed that the company who does this 10 years from now is going to be bigger than any of the companies in the space. >>>

Concept Financing from Andreessen Horowitz: Andrew Rubin, CEO of Illumio (Part 1)

Concept financings are extremely rare in the industry these days, but here is a story of an entrepreneur who did raise $8 million on a concept from Andreessen Horowitz.

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?

Andrew Rubin: I was born in Brooklyn, New York back in 1976. Most people hear New York City and they think of Manhattan right away, but Brooklyn is right next to Manhattan. That’s where my life began. I was born and raised in New York. I’ve lived in New York all the way up until I left at the end of high school. That’s where my journey begins.

Sramana Mitra: After high school, where did you go? Where did you do your college? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What were the implications on your team? What did you need to do to scale from a team point of view?

Todd Dunlop: One of the things that we always did was try to figure out how to get the best professional services. Very early on, when we went from four people to 80, we brought on an amazing HR person who helped us find those people. We lived in a university college town. That’s where a lot of our recruitment went, and we were hiring on the attitudes and ability. Especially in this town, there was nobody who had any experience.

Sramana Mitra: How big did your team grow to? >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

Chris Grandi: 2001. At the end of 2001, I was essentially committed to taking off six months to figure out what I was going to do about starting my next company. Despite not making money in that first entrepreneurial endeavor, I was committed to starting my own company. As I started that process, I connected with this IT services company based out of Boston with a business model that focuses on providing IT services to hedge funds. They had a West Coast operation that was not very big. They hired me as a consultant to step in and take a look and figure out how to make it better. I spent three months doing that and realized that I liked it. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You were able to find people with experience in Prague?

Vince Steckler: Not too successfully. For the most part, what we did was transplant people. For example, I brought over my old deputy from Symantec to run sales. He ran sales out of Prague for two or three years and groomed one of the Czech guys.

Sramana Mitra: He’s no longer with the company?

Vince Steckler: No, we rotated him back to the States. He runs Corp Dev in the States. His number two in Prague took over running sales. It doesn’t really work well with remote management or transplanted management. You have to have the skills transferred. We’ve done a fair amount of that. Then, we’ve moved heavily into three areas. There are four popular mobile security products in the world. None of them are American. The big ones globally are the two Chinese companies and the two Czech companies—us and AVG. Obviously, we know each other very well. We are very big in mobile. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s take that story chronologically. You started that in 2004?

Todd Dunlop: Yes. We always talked about how we got started. It was sort of bootstrapping.

Sramana Mitra: You said AdWords was just coming on. You essentially helped companies understand AdWords and market through AdWords. That’s what you were doing?

Todd Dunlop: We were essentially arbitraging it where we would say, “If you pay us $10 per lead, we’ll go out there and drive the traffic.” We started as performance-based search marketers and grew the company. That’s how we discovered early on how we were going to finance this company. >>>