Building a New Age AI Services Company: Cognida CEO Feroze Mohammed (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So, talk about what you pitched to your first clients and how you got them. Where does this begin?

Feroze Mohammed: Sure. I think even before we started, one thing we learned from our journey in Sierra Atlantic and later with Hitachi is to play the game only when you have an unfair advantage to win. And that comes from having very specific differentiation.

Building a New Age AI Services Company: Cognida CEO Feroze Mohammed (Part 1)

IT Services is going through a profound shift. Huge opportunity for more companies like Palantir to be built. This discussion parses the nuances of building such ventures. Needless to say, VC money is now going to flood into this model.

Three Co-founders Bootstrapped with a Paycheck, Now at Over $50M Revenue: Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Okay, got it. You just took me through a bit of the pricing and ROI analysis. What did you price your product at?

Three Co-founders Bootstrapped with a Paycheck, Now at Over $50M Revenue: Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So, you got to prototype in a bootstrapping with a paycheck mode. Your two co-founders who were doing the design and implementation work, stayed on working in a bootstrapping with a paycheck mode. You quit and went full-time. Then you got to a release in June of the next year, in six months. Which side did you decide to build the product for? Was it the buy side?

Ganesh Shankar: No, the sell side.

Three Co-founders Bootstrapped with a Paycheck, Now at Over $50M Revenue: Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Got it. Let’s go back to when you started the company. What was the premise of the company? What were you going to do?

Three Co-founders Bootstrapped with a Paycheck, Now at Over $50M Revenue: Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive (Part 1)

Ganesh and his two co-founders have built Responsive with a very small amount of capital.
They started by Bootstrapping with a Paycheck. Excellent execution, much to learn on many issues.

Scaling to $500M in Revenue: ModMed CEO Daniel Cane (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: In a fifteen-year span, the early venture guys are trying to go to $100 million in revenue and commensurate valuation in five to seven years. So, if they want to cash out the fact that you’re staying private in 15 years, that means that there is going to be some amount of change in ownership and that’s reasonable.

Do you want to go public or do you want to stay private?

Scaling to $500M in Revenue: ModMed CEO Daniel Cane (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Double click down for me on the AI aspect. I know you were doing AI right up front, but of course, AI has evolved. The market has evolved. Market’s receptivity to AI has evolved. AI has come of age, so to speak in the last fifteen years. Where are you with AI? What are you doing with AI? What are you seeing in the adoption of AI?