A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey into FinTech: Felix Rodriguez, Founder and CEO of finally (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. What were the other startups that you were working on at this point?

Felix Rodriguez: Immediately after that, we were thinking that for this company that has over 50 people, what could I and a couple of other engineers build that’s more automated. We were really passionate about automation. I think people call it AI now. But we were thinking about how could we automate the publishing business. We had a website business where we had a bunch of web designers. So, in order to get traffic on the web, you have to put content, right? And Google was starting to really take off.

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey into FinTech: Felix Rodriguez, Founder and CEO of finally (Part 1)

Felix has done nine ventures and sold several of them. He is currently building a venture-funded,
AI-enabled FinTech venture. Really intelligent, scrappy maneuvering in various alleys of online entrepreneurship.

New Student Entrepreneur Startups Course and June Udemy Course Coupons

We have packaged our proven 1Mby1M methodology for building technology startups into short courses on Udemy as a part of our aim to democratize entrepreneurship education at scale globally.

In addition to offering you up to 85% off the following Udemy courses this month, we are introducing the new course, Student Entrepreneur Startup Case Studies. Through this course, we explore our most informative and inspirational case studies of noteworthy startups founded by student entrepreneurs.

These coupons will expire on June 30, 2023, so enroll today!

Bootstrapping:

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later with Sramana Mitra: TRY1MBY1MJUN2023BTS

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Best of Bootstrapping: Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapped an E-Commerce Company to $19M

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

We’ve seen a real trend of zero-logistics e-commerce businesses scaling phenomenally well. Read Wrist-Band Founder CEO Azim Makanojiya’s experience up to when we spoke in 2014.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of educational path did you follow?

Azim Makanojiya:I am from India. My parents shifted from a village to Mumbai city for better opportunities. That’s where I was born. My father came to the US around 1984. My mom was still back there in India. Within two years, we came to Houston and settled down here. I was about a year old then.

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Not All Student Entrepreneurs Drop Out

Today’s generation of students has a high exposure to the Internet, smartphones, social and many other technologies from a very young age. It is not uncommon to see college students tinkering with technology, starting digital startups, and making millions (and occasionally even billions). Some drop out of school to build their business, but not all. Some stay on in school to get the best of both worlds.

Today, we are going to look at some such student entrepreneurs that we have worked with.

Jeff Nobbs is the founder and CEO of Extrabux, a highly regarded shopping rewards site monetized via affiliate commissions on online transactions. He co-founded Extrabux as a student at the University of Southern California in 2006. He and his co-founder, Noah Auerhahn, who lived in the same dormitory, worked on the project while they were still at school. Two years later in their junior year, they submitted Extrabux to the USC business plan competition, where it won first place and received $25,000, its first stamp of credibility. That helped them build a team and raise close to a million dollars over the next year. They are now on a run rate of over $10 million and their revenue in 2012 was about $5 million. Read more about how Jeff made Extrabux a success in my interview with him.
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Venture Capital in Slow Growth Markets: India, EdTech, Cleantech

There are a number of relatively slow growth markets in which we do a lot of business: India and EdTech are two examples. These are also two markets that I am passionate about, and have covered prodigiously for a long time. In a way, these markets, and many others that have similar characteristics, share very similar trajectories vis-a-vis entrepreneurship, venture capital, and exits. Another market in which 1M/1M doesn’t have much presence, but I have invested in, is Cleantech. The story is somewhat similar there as well. Let’s take a look at these slow-growth markets, and how they will emerge over the upcoming years.

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Sramana Mitra’s Talk At TEDxHarkerSchool

Here is the recording of the speech Sramana Mitra gave to an audience of students interested in entrepreneurship at TEDxHarkerSchool in October:

Entrepreneurship Education: Youth Entrepreneurship Course

As a follow-up to my previous post, The Time Has Come For The College Entrepreneur, a question that begs to be answered is: What is the composition of a youth entrepreneurship course? What are the assumptions that need to be made about what students know?

Of course, one of the assumptions needs to be that the student has no business background or business training. Typically, they come from other streams of study and need to take entrepreneurship as a supplemental course.

In addition, give the job prospects, we have to also keep in mind the cost of education. It’s not reasonable to expect a large number of our unemployed youth to go to expensive business school programs and be saddled with large debt burdens. Entrepreneurship education needs to be imparted quickly, efficiently, and at a minimum cost. Ideally, it’s on a live project – a company – a venture – that the student has already started tinkering with.

I have tried to keep these criteria in mind as I have designed the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) program.

I am also curious to hear from educators at high schools and colleges who are coaching and mentoring students facing this deep recession on what, if anything, you are doing to steer them toward entrepreneurship.