Entrepreneur Case Study

The entrepreneur that I choose to interview was Arun Jagatheesan, who is the CEO of CurbZero. CurbZero is the brainchild of Arun that started in December 2016. He arrived at the idea from working in his previous startup (hotel/customer experience app) that was not successful. Incidentally, India, is where the lure of entrepreneurship first took a hold of Arun. He witnessed his grandfather build a small fortune in the the 5th grade through his numerous businesses. Namely, the sugar, rice and aluminum processing business. With that being the case, he was first drawn to Silicon Valley in the late 90’s while studying computer science in India. He wanted to further his studies in the computer science industry with a specific focus on fashion or
Although, he did mention that he has numerous people advising him in his quest to conquer curbside traffic. Touching on his relationship dilemma, he mentioned contacts at Google, a Stanford consultant who works for major airports and an UBER acquaintance. In addition to this, he mentioned his reasoning behind starting the company by himself. In his previous startup he noticed that the engineers working for him (also his friends) were not as motivated to work hard because he brought them in from the beginning. Conversely, with CurbZero his strategy included beginning solo and letting the idea gain some traction. After a couple months of engaging with the airports, the potential of CurbZero became apparent and till this day Arun has his friends and acquaintances begging to work with him. Subsequently, he could have faced another type of dilemma when starting CurbZero, one that I will likely face when starting my own company. That is to say he could have experienced a visa dilemma, but he was able to apply for a special type of visa before his first job, which allowed him to remain in the
He wanted 60% for the founders and first employees and 40% for the rest. Next, we moved onto the wealth v.s. control dilemma. Specifically, he mentioned that he had no problem with diluting himself to gain venture capital funding. In fact, he wished that he had done this sooner in his previous startup. However, he is only interested in ‘smart money’ as he called it. In other words, money that brings with it connections to individuals in the transportation and logistics industry. Furthermore, once Arun secures his venture capital funding he will be able to solve his hiring dilemma. As of right now, the only obstacle that is keeping engineers and other individuals from joining CurbZero is capital. This capital will also allow the company to grow by allowing the development of an MVP. Ultimately, leading the company out of the jungle phase and into the dirt road phase, with a rallying cry of “SELL