1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Domain Knowledge

At 1Mby1M, we believe in learning from case studies of successful entrepreneurs. These case studies involve discussions on opportunities and challenges specific to the domain such as Generative AI, E-Commerce, Digital Health, Cyber Security, and FinTech. 

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bolt CEO Justin Grooms (Part 1)

Bolt is doing something unique in e-commerce personalization. Read on for more.

Sramana Mitra: All right, Justin, let’s start at the very beginning of your entrepreneurial journey. Where are you from? Where were you born? Raised? What kind of background?

Featured Videos

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Niche E-commerce Brand

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

We’ve talked about niche, proprietary e-commerce brands and how entrepreneurs are building businesses around different concepts. Founder Eric Shannon shared the story of Big Barker, a dog bed for large dogs, with me in 2017.

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?

Eric Shannon: I was born in Pennsylvania in a suburb about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I went to Temple University. I was a Finance major. After school, I moved to California and took a job in banking. I hated it and was terrible at it. I had a couple of other jobs and eventually discovered the internet side of the economy. I became very attached to it. I started in that industry in 2004.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Solopreneur Bootstrapped a Niche E-commerce Venture to $12M

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

It is very difficult to find gaps in e-commerce these days. Sawyer Twain Founder Chris Turner found one and executed the hell out of it.

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?

Chris Turner: I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. I graduated from Arizona State University back in 2004.

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Digital Nomad Building a $5M+ E-Commerce Business: IntelligentLabs CEO Rus Hughes (Part 1)

Rus lives the life of a digital nomad. He started life as a techie, and with a very small team and a cofounder, has built a $5M+ niche e-commerce business selling supplements. Excellent story full of lessons and nuances.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Tell me about where you grew up. What is the beginning of the story?

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped an E-commerce Startup with a Paycheck to Exit

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

There are roll-ups of e-commerce brands going on right now. This case study delves into one such that has exited into a roll-up effort.

Jay Perkins, Co-founder of Kettlebell Kings, currently runs Living.Fit which produces digital workouts, fitness education courses, and fitness equipment.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Jay Perkins: I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. In 2004, I moved to Austin, Texas to go to college at the University of Texas. Pretty soon after arriving in Austin, I just fell in love with it. I felt like this was an incredible place to be in.

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Building a Million-Dollar E-commerce Business in Fashion

I started one of the Internet’s first fashion e-commerce companies in 1999. It was very expensive to do so at the time.

Today, an online fashion business can be launched in an extraordinarily capital-efficient manner. 

There are so many effective e-commerce platforms from Amazon, eBay and Etsy to Shopify and BigCommerce that will allow you to either start selling through their marketplaces or create your storefront for just a few dollars. 

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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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Building a Bootstrapped Million-Dollar Online Fashion Business

I started one of the Internet’s first fashion e-commerce companies in 1999. It was very expensive to do so at the time.

Today, an online fashion business can be launched in an extraordinarily capital-efficient manner. 

There are so many effective e-commerce platforms from Amazon, eBay and Etsy to Shopify and BigCommerce that will allow you to either start selling through their marketplaces or create your storefront for just a few dollars. 

There are skilled freelancers on sites like Fiverr and Upwork to whom you can outsource some of your business building tasks at a very reasonable price.

A bootstrapped, capital-efficient, million-dollar online fashion business is a great asset to build and own, and after that, you can decide to grow it further or not. It is a great place to be and you do not have to be an IT genius to get to that place.

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Real-World Examples for Building a Successful Two-Sided E-commerce Marketplace

Two-sided marketplaces are becoming increasingly popular in the e-commerce startup world. eBay and Etsy are some of the most obvious examples of two-sided marketplaces, but now we are seeing a lot of niche and esoteric marketplaces as well all over the world. 

So what does it take to be successful in this kind of business? 

This Udemy course provides real-world examples of successful two-sided marketplaces, as well as a step-by-step breakdown on how they were built.

1. Building a Two-Sided E-commerce Marketplace w/ Sramana Mitra

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Accelerate Your E-commerce Business with Fundamental Courses

Are you new to e-commerce or already scaling your business? Do you want to accelerate? This is a collection of courses that can help you save time and resources by teaching you how to avoid common mistakes through case studies.

The courses are built on real-time examples of successful entrepreneurs, so if you study them carefully, you’ll be several steps ahead of the competition.

You can choose from a variety of different courses depending on your skill level, or experience in entrepreneurship. There are lessons for beginners as well as more advanced users who want to take their business to the next level faster.

Depending on what you’re creating, pick between these courses.

• How to Build E-commerce Startups with Sramana Mitra
• How to Build 2-Sided E-commerce Marketplaces with Sramana Mitra

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