From Iran to Stanford to Silicon Valley Entrepreneur: Farnaz Ronaghi, Co-Founder and CTO of NovoEd (Part 1)

Donald Trump wants to restrict immigrants, especially those from Muslim countries, and especially from Iran. Well, read this Iranian entrepreneur’s story.

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

Farnaz Ronaghi: I was born in Tehran, Iran. I came to the United States for graduate school. I was accepted in Stanford University for a Master’s degree in Management Science and Engineering. That is where I met my adviser and co-founder. After that, I started my Ph.D. My work was related to the intersection of computer science and social science similar to human-computer interaction but was more focused on incentives and game theory. One of the pain points that I had >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There are lots of lead customers, which is really important for a startup.

Hannu Verkasalo: You’re right. Let’s talk about the incident on mobile. Many of these companies including Google and Facebook want to support new innovations and new ideas. In many cases, they use you because they want to bring something new to the market. In Europe, people care more about the name and the reputation. They are more conservative. Big companies are less willing to spend money on a new product.

Sramana Mitra: 2010 was when the acquisition happened? >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Eventually, where did you raise money from?

Allan Wille: The Series A lead was from Canada. That was from OMERS. OMERS, of course, has a big history with Hootsuite and Shopify. They know that space very well. Our seed round had both Canadian and US investors. I don’t know if you know Maya Hayman at Converge?

Sramana Mitra: I don’t.

Allan Wille: She’s amazing. She was instrumental in helping us get the seed round together. She participated in all of our follow-on rounds. Just recently in January, we announced our Series B, which was fantastic as well. We closed a $12 million round. It’s a story of a lot of perseverance and listening to >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many investors did you have and how much money did you raise?

Hannu Verkasalo: We raised $2 million.

Sramana Mitra: From investors in Finland?

Hannu Verkasalo: Yes, we had two investors from Finland and a couple of angels. I put in quite a bit of money. Knowing what I know now and through the experience of building Verto, I think we could have built it into a much bigger business. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you found your product-market fit, there were other players in the market in the visualization space like Tableau. What did you experience from a competitive challenge point of view?

Allan Wille: We actually saw relatively little competition. That’s because we were going after small and midsize companies. Even today, the business intelligence and visualization space is very crowded, but it’s crowded in the enterprise. All those players exist to sell into larger organizations. They have an outbound sales force. They’re very expensive and complex.

We focus on the small and midsize companies where they don’t have an analyst or they don’t have an IT person. How can we be prescriptive and >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The product idea was based on what you were doing for Nokia and what you wanted to bring for the other mobile operators, right?

Hannu Verkasalu: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: This is now the post-iPhone era.

Hannu Verkasalu: Yes. Now more and more companies were interested in mobile being a medium for content and services. Of course, Nokia was no longer >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn? What were the key levers that you learned to push or look to push at that point?

Allan Wille: I think the obvious one was that our revenue was simply not growing. That was the one that was staring us in our face. We did have some successful customers, and we had heard that they relied on and loved our product. However, the rest of the model was just too difficult. Every time I chatted with other CEOs, that was the sense I got. Sometimes people are polite, but I wasn’t certainly hearing the yes. >>>

Can Solopreneurs Succeed?

There is a myth in the startup eco-system that solopreneurs do not succeed.

This is a MYTH.

Watch this inspiring 1 minute 6 second video of how Sean Broihier navigated his journey:

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