Secrets to Building a Million Dollar Company

Sramana Mitra has been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. Her fields of experience span from hard core technology disciplines like semiconductors to sophisticated consumer marketing industries including fashion and education. As an entrepreneur CEO, Sramana founded three companies: Dais (off-shore software services), Intarka (sales lead generation and qualification Software; VC: NEA) and Uuma (online personalized store for selling clothes using Expert Systems software; VC: Redwood). Two of these were acquired, while the third received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren which the company did not accept. As strategy consultant, Sramana has consulted with over 80 companies, including public companies such as SAP, Cadence Design Systems, Webex, KLA-Tencor, Best Buy, MercadoLibre and Tessera among others. Her work has also included numerous startups and VCs, and she played interim VP Marketing roles for seven such ventures. Sramana has a proven track record in turnarounds, both small private companies (Example: think3, with Joe Costello) and divisions of larger companies (Example: a $100 million business unit of Cadence, with Lavi Lev). She has also created major growth strategies through new market penetration, M&A, industry roll-ups, etc. Sramana writes a weekly column for Forbes and is currently authoring Entrepreneur Journeys, a series of books focused on demystifying entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur Journeys (Volume One) and Bootstrapping, Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction (EJ Volume Two) and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market are now available from Amazon.com. Sramana has a Masters degree in EECS from MIT and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Economics from Smith College. Sramana is an engaging and entertaining public speaker. (www.sramanamitra.com)