Aasim Saied has some unorthodox ideas about how technology entrepreneurs should fundraise and how best to structure a board of directors. Saied founded Akyumen, a self-described “digital products company committed to opening the door to innovation and advancing access to education through state of the art niche products that bring technology directly to your hands.” Executive spoke with him about raising capital and governance. E You mentioned barriers of entry to the United States. What are the main or most challenging barriers you have to deal with? In the beginning the biggest barriers to entry were people. In the US when we spoke to venture capitalist companies, they are the biggest barriers. And in fact we didn’t know better when we were in college about who to go to in order to raise capital. But then, I did meet certain people who told me ‘Venture capitalists are nothing but
