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Building a Fat Startup: Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta (Part 2)

Sunny Gupta: I left IBM and joined a local Seattle-based venture company called Performant as a business guy. I stayed there for 18 months and sold that business to Mercury Interactive. Once I went to Mercury, I transitioned into a product role. That was incredible because a lot of my learnings around being close to the customer started applying there. >>>

Comment-Selling on Facebook: Smocked Auctions Founders Amy Laws and Nicole Brewer (Part 3)

Sramana: What volume of merchandise were you able to push during that first sale?

Nicole Brewer: We sold 700 units during our first sample sale. That amounted to around $20,000 of business. Once that sale was over we realized we had a lot of fun and we wanted to do it again, but without having everyone over at my home. >>>

Building a Fat Startup: Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta (Part 1)

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

One more look at what it takes to build a fat startup. Sunny Gupta discusses Apptio. The company raised a $7 million series A to get started, and then went to raise over $130 million thus far.

Sramana Mitra: Sunny, let’s start at the very beginning. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where were you born and raised? What kind of circumstances? Give us a backstory of the Apptio story.

Sunny Gupta: I was born in India in a town north of New Delhi. I went to school there and lived in New Delhi till I was 19. My father was in the government services. This is in the late ’80s and I didn’t feel, from a career perspective, that there were that many career options. >>>

Comment-Selling on Facebook: Smocked Auctions Founders Amy Laws and Nicole Brewer (Part 2)

Sramana: At what point in the friendship did the idea of doing a business together start coming into the foreground?

Amy Laws: That was in the summer of 2010. We had attended a sample sale. The wholesale showrooms in places like Dallas, New York, and Atlanta purchase sample sets from their manufacturers. That is what they use to show potential clients who are going to come in and shop for their stores. They routinely try to sell the samples once the season is over. They will sell the samples on consignment who will then turn around and sell the samples to anyone. >>>

Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: Axosoft CEO Hamid Shojaee (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that’s worth discussing in your story in terms of strategy and moves that led to big losses or wins?

Hamid Shojaee: From an entrepreneurial standpoint, I think that having that focus on a particular market segment is very important and then doing things for that market segment that creates value outside of the product offerings that you have is important because it helps establish credibility. >>>

Comment-Selling on Facebook: Smocked Auctions Founders Amy Laws and Nicole Brewer (Part 1)

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

Advertising on Facebook is complicated. You can spend tons of money getting ‘Likes’ without making any sales. Smocked Auctions is very smart about actually ‘selling’ on Facebook. Much to learn!

Sramana: Amy and Nicole, I would like to start by talking a bit about your personal journeys. Where are you from? What circumstances were you raised under?
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Bootstrapping with a Paycheck: Axosoft CEO Hamid Shojaee (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This whole phenomenon of having employees do intrapreneurship is a big trend that we’re looking at a lot. In our incubation program, we do a lot of corporate incubation. We have this Incubator-in-a-Box program that a bunch of corporations are using to layer their own incubation programs. We run, for example, a large program at Oracle where Oracle does this Oracle-1M/1M intrapreneurship challenge where employees are encourage to compete for 1M/1M scholarship. We’re very familiar of what you’re talking about. It’s a smart way to both keep employees motivated as well as fish for ideas that could become sizeable businesses.

Hamid Shojaee: Right, that’s exactly what the intent is.

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Black Entrepreneur in North Carolina Says No Bias: Rod Brown, COO of OnceLogix (Part 7)

Sramana: After listening to your story, it really seems like the software model is the best option for scaling the business and that there is a lot of opportunity there.

Rod Brown: There is plenty of opportunity in the US as well as opportunities abroad. We are looking at an opportunity in South Africa that could double the size of our company almost overnight if we can pull it off. We really just have to execute because we know what we are doing on the software side of the business. It is a matter of re-dedication. >>>