Rohit has effectively used the Bootstrapping Using Services technique to bootstrap an AI-Powered Enterprise Security venture to mid eight figure revenues. In that process, he has turned down offers for Venture Capital. I believe, in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, currently, Bootstrapping Using Services is one of the best ways to find problems to solve and build successful companies. Sramana Mitra: Let's start by introducing our audience to yourself and then we'll come to the Osprey Security journey in a moment. You are a serial entrepreneur, yes? Rohit Anabheri: That is correct. Sramana Mitra: You started your first company as a 19-year-old. Rohit Anabheri: Yes, I started when I was in college. Sramana Mitra: What kind of a company was this? Rohit Anabheri: It's a software company. I was in college applying for a job. I stumbled upon a job that required me to know database management systems. I applied for it. I wasn't selected. What would you do if y
Kolkata doesn't have many product startups. True. Most startups are services based. True. There is nothing wrong with services companies. Technical skill development in India has happened at scale in the services companies. It would be tremendously helpful to have large scale skill development happen in Eastern India. Entrepreneurs won't build tech #startups without tech skilled people. An ecosystem has many dimensions. Also Bootstrapping tech product startups using services is a tried and true technique. In Kolkata, Abhishek Rungta has built a very successful services company, is an active angel investor, etc. In Pune, Anand Deshpande has built a tremendously successful services company and has also been active in building the startup ecosystem in Pune and in India at large. New technologies are coming into the forefront rapidly and continuously. Generative AI is only one of the more recent ones. Microsoft and Google are enhancing their cloud platforms to include
If you haven't already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Here's yet another case in point in our Bootstrapping Using Services series. Founder Manish Sood was scaling Reltio super fast when we spoke in 2015, and had raised venture capital, consistent with our theme Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later. Sramana Mitra: Let's start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Manish Sood: I was born in the northern part of India. I grew up and went to school there. I went to an engineering college in the southern part of India, which was a new experience for me from a location perspective and getting acclimatized to the overall culture and environment. I trained as a Mechanical Engineer. Once I graduated, I started working in India. I worked there for about four years applying my technology skills to solve problems starting with
If you haven't already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Adding to our roster of Bootstrapping Using Services case studies, here's my conversation with PMG.net Founders Joe LeCompte and Robert Castles from 2015. Sramana Mitra: Let's start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Tell us a bit about where you come from, where you were born and raised, and in what kind of background. Robert Castles: I was born in Columbia, South Carolina. I spent the first half of my life there through to college. I have always been interested in technology as early as I can remember. When I was 11 years old, I begged my father for a Radio Shack Color Computer so that I could take it home and learn how to program. This is while all my friends were looking for baseball mitts, which I also like. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for that computer, which I got. My dad then helped me get a job at 15 to
If you haven't already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Continuing with our Bootstrapping Using Services coverage, we bring you HighQ Founder CEO Ajay Patel's story from London in 2014. Thomson Reuters acquired HighQ in 2019. Sramana Mitra: Let's start with some back story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background? Ajay Patel: I was born in London about 42 years ago. I've lived here all my life. My origins are actually Indian. My father is from India and my mother was born in Fiji, but she's of Indian descent. Sramana Mitra: What about school? I imagine you went to school in London. Ajay Patel: I went to school in London. I studied at the University of Manchester where I did my degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Then I did a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics in Management Information Systems. Sramana Mitra: That was around mid