Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Forbes Columnist Sramana Mitra features OraQuel on April 15's 1M/1M Strategy Round Table

Forbes Columnist Sramana Mitra covered my OraQuel and OraQuel's Heart Smart Oral Care positioing on her weekly 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable April 15. I was honored to be selected as the show's opening presenter. Sramana's counsel is that OraQuel is essentially on track and that we need to keep doing what we are doing. Take a listen to the broadcast here. Listen to April 15's Round Table. We like her! Follow up: We were informed that the OraQuel segmant of the broadcast generated more public chat during the chat live segment of the show than any other Round Table business covered to date. That makes us happy too!

About Sramana Mitra

1M/1M Strategy Roundtables for Entrepreneurs

As part of the 1M/1M initiative, Sramana Mitra offers free weekly online strategy roundtables for entrepreneurs looking to discuss positioning, financing, and other aspects of a startup venture. Up to 1,000 people can attend each session, but only the first five who register to pitch will be able to present their business ideas. All attendees are able to join in on the conversations via a live chat.

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. Her current focus, however, is primarily in the realms of Web 3.0 and Enterprise 3.0, and related infrastructure. She has a particular interest in Media and Retail companies and their transition to a Web-centric world.

As an entrepreneur CEO, Sramana founded 3 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 70 companies, including public companies like SAP, Cadence Design Systems, Webex, KLA-Tencor, Tessera, Mercado Libre among others. Her work has also included numerous startups and VCs, and she played Interim VP Marketing roles for 7 such ventures. Sramana has a proven track-record in turn-arounds, both small private companies and divisions of larger companies. She has also created major growth strategies through new market penetration, M&A, Industry Roll-ups, etc.

Writings from Sramana’s popular strategy blog are syndicated by Seeking Alpha, Yahoo! Finance, PaidContent, ReadWriteWeb, Cadwire, Emergic, GigaOm, and many other high traffic online business, finance, and technology publishers. Sramana is also a colmnist for Forbes and the author of Entrepreneur Journeys (Volume One).

Sramana has a Masters degree in EECS from MIT and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Economics from Smith College.

Specialties- Positioning.

- Strategic Planning Programs.

- Product strategy, Market strategy, Channel strategy, M&A, Funding, and Exit strategy.

- Business Development, Deal structuring, Negotiation, Opening and Closing deals.

- Communication, Category Creation, Media/Analyst/Investor/Customer/Team facing Messaging.

- Fund raising.

- M&A Deals.

- Turnarounds.

- Strategic Re-engineering and Catalyzing Change.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Official Google Blog: A different kind of company name

A nice test of brand elasticity. Official Google Blog: A different kind of company name