Omninox develops interactive, mobile study guides called Omniguides™ for high level math and science courses. It aims to consolidate the material that students learn for Advanced Placement (AP) STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) classes by offering built-in software tools such as a calculator, quizzes, and sketchpad with social sharing. >>>
Recently, the restaurant technology market made news when none other than the tech giant Apple filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a new ordering and reservation system that could work with their products. Apple’s patent application covers systems, methods, and storage media that will help with making reservations and maintaining a wait list for a resource at a restaurant. Essentially, that is what OpenTable (Nasdaq: OPEN) does for a living and as a reaction, the company’s stock did take a bit of a tumble from the two-year high it had touched after the announcement of its Q3 results.
Further to my earlier post, Mentoring Startups: 10 Lessons We Have Learned, I want to also go over our learnings through running, what is today, the world’s only global virtual incubation program.
1. Reach & Scalability: We have successfully created a virtual incubation program that entrepreneurs all over the world are using. The self-service curriculum is quite rich now, which makes the program scalable. Also, the online mentoring roundtables have been extremely productive, as discussed in the earlier post. We’re also running an active content organization that helps our portfolio companies get coverage, as well as distribution for their messages through social media (reach over 100k currently).
2. Inclusive vs. Exclusive: We have successfully reset the definition of entrepreneurship within the program from Entrepreneurship = Financing to Entrepreneurship = (Customers + Revenues + Profits), Financing and Exit are optional. This has enabled us to be inclusive, as opposed to exclusive. Unlike YCombinator that takes pride in how many entrepreneurs they reject, we take pride in the fact that we do not reject anybody. Over 99% of entrepreneurs seeking financing get rejected. We work with ‘The Other 99%’ irrespective of their fundability, helping them grow to become successful businesses, and to raise financing if appropriate. Also, you don’t have to move to Silicon Valley to get incubated with us, which also gives us tremendous flexibility on whom we can work with.
Sramana: I think it is great that you not only started the company while you were in College but that you were earning revenue as well. At that time it was very rare for an Internet company to actually have revenue.
Nick Mehta: That was a crazy time as you know well. In June of 1998 we all had a big decision to make. We were all on the traditional college to job path. One of the co-founders had a job lined up at McKinsey and I was ready to go work in technology investment banking for Credit Suisse First Boston. We came up with a grand plan to work on our website through the summer and then sell it for $100,000 before heading off to start our jobs. We felt that starting off with $25,000 dollars a piece was a great way to get our professional careers going. >>>
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 199th FREE online 1M/1M roundtable mentoring session on Thursday, December 19, 2013, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/9:30 p.m. India IST.
If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea to Sramana Mitra. You’ll gain straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and she’ll answer any of your questions. Others can register to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.
You can learn more here and register to pitch or attend here. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!
Nick Mehta is the CEO of Gainsight, a B2B company that offers customer success management for SaaS companies with a goal of reducing churn. Prior to Gainsight, Nick was the CEO of leading SaaS e-discovery provider LiveOffice through its acquisition by Symantec. Prior to that was a vice president at VERITAS Software and Symantec Corporation. He has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at Trinity Ventures and an executive-in-residence at Accel Partners. He is a graduate of Harvard, from which he has a bachelor’s in biochemistry and a master’s in computer science.
Sramana: Nick, let’s start this story by getting your personal story. Where do you come from? What is the genesis of your entrepreneurial career?
Nick Mehta: I was born in Massachusetts but spent most of my childhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I went to school at Harvard and came out to California after college. I have been living in the Bay Area for around 15 years now. >>>
Everyone seems to be a startup mentor these days. As Sramana Mitra points out in her article, Mentoring Startups: 10 Lessons We Have Learned, even those who have never done a startup or raised money are ready to advise entrepreneurs and promise things that cannot be delivered.
In contrast, One Million by One Million (1M/1M) has been consistently committed to transparently and effectively mentoring all interested startups as demonstrated by the announcement of our 200th Roundtable to be held on January 9, 2014, at 8 a.m. PST. Almost 20,000 people have participated at our free online roundtables and at least 1,000 have pitched.
As always, we invite any serious entrepreneur to register to “pitch” to sell your business idea to Sramana Mitra. Expect your pitch to be seen by a larger audience of potential customers, investors, media and entrepreneurs since this 200th roundtable will be well publicized and the video recordings of milestone roundtables are always our most popular. You’ll gain straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and Sramana will answer any of your questions. Others can register to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.
You can learn more about our free and online mentoring roundtables here and register to pitch or attend our 200th roundtable here. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!
According to the Euromonitor, the North American retail market was worth $3.1 trillion last year with online sales accounting for $183 billion of the retail sales. The researcher estimates that the North American online retail market will grow 14.5% annually to $360 billion by 2017. Within the online retail sales market, flash sales are an upcoming trend, but not all of them are as successful as the mom-focused site, Zulily.