Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Bobby Yazdani, Founder and CEO of SABA (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: That is an evolution I would say almost all enterprise software companies have gone through in the last decade.

Bobby Yazdani: That is right. But with that evolution came an operational model, retraining our enablement of our own organization to support a very different business model. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Bobby Yazdani, Founder and CEO of SABA (Part 1)

Bobby Yazdani is the chief executive officer of SABA, one of the industry’s leading learning and talent management providers. Bobby holds a BA in applied mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1997 Bobby founded SABA, and he took the company public in 2000. Today the company has revenue of more than $100 million. In this interview Bobby talks about different ways of learning through mobile and social platforms and the adoption of his technology in enterprises today. Further, he shares insights into what he believes the future of education will look like.

Sramana Mitra: Bobby, let’s start with some context about SABA. I have been following the company for many years, so this would be an opportunity to introduce the company to the audience as well as bring me up to speed about your evolution.

Bobby Yazdani: A number of colleagues and I founded the company back in 1997. The core catalyst behind the company and our products was the introduction of the Internet and the subsequent shift of many enterprise business processes to the Internet. >>>

Startup Teaches Kids How To Write, Invites Teachers and Students To Join

Most kids use technology for games and music. What about using technology to learn to write, an essential skill to master early in life?

With Cubert’s Cube, entrepreneur Melanie Kusmik is attempting to do just that – teaching kids how to write by harnessing the power of the social web. Years of experience in software development and product management at companies like Quantum, 3Com, Nortel Networks has helped Melanie learn to transform a concept into a business. >>>

Families: Nurture Entrepreneurs

Of late, graduating from college has been a source of anxiety rather than excitement for many families. Youth unemployment is at 17%. Parents are concerned about their children’s future. Here’s one way parents and families can help: support their children’s entrepreneurial ambitions. >>>

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: Monarch Media, Santa Cruz, California

Online education and training continue to grow in popularity. It costs less for students to get bachelor’s and master’s degrees online. Employers, too, save money by arranging for employees to take training courses online and on their own time.

Monarch Media has provided e-learning solutions, including online and mobile courses, educational software development, learning management systems, and instructional design for more than 13 years. The Santa Cruz–based company serves a client base across both the private and public sectors. The top target segments are educational publishers, universities, government agencies, nonprofits and corporate training departments, and the company follows a traditional business-to-business approach. Within the educational publishing market, Monarch Media focuses on serving large and mid-sized companies ranging from the largest in the industry, such as Cengage Learning, Elsevier and the National Institutes of Health to specialty publishers like ETR Associates, a provider of specialized public health training materials. Monarch Media also plans to launch new product lines of skills training courses for mobile delivery.

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1M/1M: Video Message Based On Recent Talks

I have been giving a lot of talks lately, and interacting with hundreds of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship development leaders around the world. Here is an YouTube video synthesizing some of the core points of these discussions on bootstrapping, positioning, and lean startups:

1M/1M: Online Education Module Of The Curriculum Is Ready

Readers, we have just released the online education module of the 1M/1M premium curriculum. In it, you will find a synthesis of the various trends and opportunities that I see at this point, along with case studies and video lectures. The opportunity is clearly huge in multiple dimensions, and I am convinced that many businesses can and will be built in this segment over this decade.

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: Latitude Learning, Saline, Michigan

Latitude Learning is an open source, performance-driven software as a service (SaaS) learning management system (LMS) designed to assist training firms, middle-market companies, Fortune 1000 enterprises, and non-profit organizations.  >>>