
Numerous developers around the world are turning into successful entrepreneurs. NLP Cloud CEO Julien Sanlinas provides a textbook case study of a brilliant journey that is a highly repeatable blueprint to follow.
This is a terrific story of a European EdTech venture that has raised $600 million dollars and is scaling extremely well after 3 years of not finding a monetization model.
We’ve done a lot of EdTech case studies and also a lot of 2-sided Marketplace Case Studies. Here’s one from The Netherlands that compares/competes with CourseHero and Quizlet. Terrific story!
SoPost CEO Jonny Grubin started as a solo entrepreneur, bootstrapped with a paycheck, and has built a $15M+ revenue global business with a small amount of funding. Excellent story!
European companies often follow a methodical, deliberate approach to business building as opposed to mindlessly chasing venture capital. Juha Lehtonen, CEO of FA Solutions, has used the principles of bootstrapping using services to build his venture from Finland.
Often niche ideas are great to build capital efficient, profitable startups upon. Hatch CEO Joris Kroese talks about building a capital-efficient niche SaaS startup from The Netherlands.
Simon Taylor, CEO of HYCU, offers excellent insights into creating unfair advantages with unique engineering team leverage in off-center locations. He also discusses creative channel strategy techniques.
Founder Victor Allis bootstrapped Quintiq to $30M, raised funding, and then sold the company for over $300M. Activote is his second startup, currently self-funded.
Squirro CEO Dorian Selz tells a great story of AI applications within Financial Services.
Behamics CEO Valon Xhafa is a software developer who made a successful transition to an entrepreneur and had a quick exit with his first venture. His second venture is already at $5M+ in revenues with just a pre-seed round of financing. This venture, Behemics, has already received two acquisition offers. Fabulous story!
Dominik has built a 230-people virtual company and raised $58 Million in Financing. But first, he and his Brazilian co-founder bootstrapped to $1M ARR before raising a penny! Clever SEO strategy was at the heart of the first success. Dominik is from Austria.
IntelligentLabs CEO Rus Hughes lives the life of a digital nomad. He started life as a techie, and with a very small team and a co-founder, has built a $5M+ niche e-commerce business selling supplements. Excellent story full of lessons and nuances.
Alexander Zacke, Founder and CEO of Auctionata, discusses his online auction house business based in Berlin and how he has built a quintessential Web 3.0 business taking advantage of the web’s building blocks: commerce, community and content in the context of online auctions.
Christian Blume, CEO and co-founder of Cleverbridge, from Germany, offers an European perspective to the question: “Is entrepreneurship only about the exit?”
Paulo Rosado is CEO of OutSystems, one of the very few enterprise software companies out of Europe, and they have succeeded in building a substantial global business.
Fred Guelen, CFO and President of North America for Planon Group, along with his brother have built Planon to over $100M in revenue from the Netherlands. This is a very encouraging discussion for our global entrepreneurs.
Gero Decker is Co-founder and CEO at Signavio, an enterprise software company that has successfully scaled to $20 million in ARR from Europe. They have also made a successful entry into the US market and raised financing from a US venture firm.
Guillermo Gaspart, Founder and CEO of ByHours.com in Barcelona, shares his wonderful journey of building a unique online travel company. We had an interesting discussion on the issue of how much funding is too much.
Guy Mucklow, President and Co-founder of PCA Predict, has bootstrapped PCA from London to $20 million in 2016 revenue. He also turned down a $100 million acquisition offer in 2015.
Stefan Batory is Co-founder and CEO of Booksy, a SaaS-enabled marketplace venture.
Alexandre Wentzo is CEO of Casewise, an enterprise software company that started in London and has scaled in the US. The company is self-financed and did $24 million in revenue last year. Our discussion focuses on some of the nuances of starting an enterprise software company in Europe and scaling it in the US.
CEO Marcus Jacobsson’s Tipser is a Swedish company that is turning affiliate marketing on its head! Super interesting conversation.
In Europe, significant startups are being built in every country. Here are some case studies that I hope will help to illustrate this point and you will learn a lot from:
Building An Enterprise Software Company From Europe: President Of Neolane North America, Stephan Dietrich
Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, Co-CEO of LoopUp
Bootstrapping a Cloud Startup from London: Alex Fuller, Co-Founder of CloudSense
Building a Global Software Company from France: BonitaSoft CEO Miguel Valdés-Faura
Building An Open Source ERP Co. From Pamplona, Spain: OpenBravo CEO Paolo Juvara
Bootstrapping with Services from London: Gurman Hundal, CEO of Media IQ
Bootstrap First with Services from London, Raise Money Later: Rich Waldron, Tray.io
Bootstrapping Using Services from London: Conversocial CEO Joshua March
Building a Fashion Accessories Marketplace from London: Kiyan Foroughi, Boticca
Bootstrapping Using Services from London: Ajay Patel, CEO of HighQ
Bootstrapping a Language Product Company to $450M: SDL CEO Mark Lancaster
Building a Conversion Optimization Company from London: Graham Cooke, CEO of Qubit
Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and Scaling in Coimbatore: Kovai CEO Saravana Kumar
Bootstrapping an Ad Tech Company from Paris: Daniel Nathan, CEO of BidMotion
Building an Internet of Things Platform Company from Zaragoza, Spain: Alicia Asin, CEO of Libelium
Building a Secondary Ticketing Business From Spain: Ander Michelena, CEO of Ticketbis
Building a Successful Social Media Business from Germany: Moviepilot CEO Tobias Bauckhage
Building an App Platform Company from the Netherlands: Mendix CEO Derek Roos
Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship from Estonia: Lauri Kinkar, CEO of Messente
Bootstrapping by Piggybacking from Romania: 123FormBuilder CEO Florin Cornianu
Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler
Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ondrej Vlcek, CEO of Avast
Bootstrapping from Ukraine: BPMOnline CEO Katherine Kostereva
Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim
Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater
Bootstrap First from Belarus, Raise Money Later from Silicon Valley: PandaDoc CEO Mikita Mikado
Bootstrapping from Belgium: iText CEO Bruno Lowagie
Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Czech Republic: Vaclav Muchna, CEO of YSoft
Please pick your favorite case studies from the course and run them through a validation and positioning exercise. Use the 1Mby1M Self-Assessment questionnaire and try to answer each question in it.
Here are examples of some pitches that took place during one of our free and online mentoring roundtable programs. You will find a pitch template under Resources. Once you are ready, come pitch your business idea at an upcoming 1Mby1M Roundtable.
The 1Mby1M Methodology is based on case studies. In this course, Sramana Mitra shares the tribal knowledge of tech entrepreneurs by giving students the rare seat at the table with the entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders who provide the most instructive perspectives on how to build a thriving business. Through these conversations, students gain access to case studies exploring the alleys of entrepreneurship. Sramana’s synthesis of key learnings and incisive analysis add great depth to each discussion.
In my experience, Europe preserves, packages, and markets culture better than any other place in the world. In Europe during the summer, many major and minor celebrations of the arts and culture take place all over Europe, every day.
In London, for instance, theater is still a way of life. Industry research indicates that in recent years theater attendance has been very strong even though film has come to dominate over the past several decades.
Europe has had some trouble economically, but isn’t there an innate intelligence and resilience in the European way of life?
Europe cares greatly about keeping farmers in their villages, fostering a decentralized policy that encourages, through farming subsidies, a healthy, natural way of life that is rooted in sustainability and quality of life, not rampant and mindless urbanization. As a result, if you go to the farmer’s markets in small villages, they are full of both small producers and customers.
And then, of course, there is tourism. The lure of European destinations, the sites and sounds, the classical architecture, ruins, historical monuments, and for some, the way of life that so elegantly serves up arts, culture, food, and wine – will always be a powerful draw.
The role I see for Europe is in reaching out to the rest of the world and taking a leadership stance in developing taste. Whether it is educating the Chinese market about French and Italian wines, or packaging culture for the consumption of Silicon Valley’s geeks, there is a European renaissance possible. But it will likely not be one concentrated in Paris or Florence; rather, it will be an international renaissance whereby Europe exports its strengths in culture, preservation, cuisine, and style to a world growing in wealth and sophistication.
The by-product of that kind of wide-ranging taste-making will also yield gains for Europe on its own soil. Like me, people who are seduced by the European way of life
My hypothesis is that Europe continues to be a mecca of culture, and there is adequate technical expertise on that continent to come up with more significant concepts that may become drivers of major trends
During this course, I will be teaching about some of the biggest entrepreneurship success stories out of Europe. We will have in-depth conversations around the entrepreneur journeys of several of Europe’s most successful founders.
Designed for tech entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs with an interest in Europe, this course provides lessons learned and best advice from several super successful European entrepreneurs in their own words.
The 1Mby1M courses are all heavily based on interview-based case studies on Innovation, Business Models, Go To Market Strategies, Validation Principles, and various other nuances of an entrepreneur's journey. We offer extensive opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn the lessons from the trenches from successful entrepreneurs who have done it before and Investors who support their ambition.