Roundtable Recap: July 28 – Investors And Incubators Need To Look At Pre-Incubation

This week, I’ve had several meetings with venture funds, incubators, corporate accelerators and other significant players in the startup eco-system. One theme seems to come up over and again, especially from geographies outside Silicon Valley: lack of a reliable pipeline of deals. On July 1, 2006, commenting on the Indian startup scenario, I had written a blog post called Too Much Money, Too Few Deals. Today, the Indian scenario has improved greatly, but still the issue of lack of a mature deal flow remains. The same applies to Malaysia, where our partner, the MAD Incubator, is in search of 10 good deals to put through the 1M/1M program. And it also applies to many different parts of the United States where startup activity is still a relatively small portion of economic development.

In many of these cases, the funds or the accelerators want to put in $100,000 to $500,000 in select ventures but are having a hard time finding mature entrepreneurs to support.

To those in our eco-system who are facing this problem around the globe, I have the following suggestion: Instead of giving $100,000 to one startup, give $1,000 each to 100 startups, and put a larger number of entrepreneurs in your community through 1M/1M. Announce one or two $100,000 prizes that only those entrepreneurs who have gone through and completed at least 60 hours of 1M/1M curriculum would be eligible for.

I am pretty sure that the pipeline in your community will be of a significantly higher quality within six months.

During this week’s roundtable, we had three startups presenting.

iFood.tv
First, Vikrant Mathur from Menlo Park, California, discussed iFood.tv, a video recipe network where chefs, cook-book authors, etc. share their videos, and over three million culinary arts enthusiasts consume them. An ad-supported network, the company has achieved over $1 million in revenue and is profitable. It is currently evaluating options and strategies for growth and the possibility of additional financing. Today’s discussion was largely about those options. I like the company a lot, and being an enthusiast of the  culinary arts myself, I look forward to using the site.

In fact, on a small side note, I want to draw your attention to a series that is currently running on my blog called The Next European Renaissance in which I have discussed culinary arts as an area where I’d like to see more innovation that is enabled by technology. The series is a followup to my earlier series, Silicon Valley: The Next Decade where I discussed the Valley’s next renaissance. While I was in Europe recently, I had a chance to think more deeply about the role Europe ought to be playing in that and other Renaissance movements around the world.

PartingOut
Next, Kevin Fullerton, from Graham, Texas, pitched PartingOut, an online exchange for after-market auto parts that are beyond the top 10 to 20 that most parts dealers sell. Kevin is a 1M/1M premium member, and he has a deep understanding and domain knowledge of the ‘salvage’ business as it is called. Kevin has come up with a rather subtle idea for tapping into the parts that are beyond the top 10 to 20, where most of the market is focused. I look forward to working further with Kevin on building this business.

Healthcare e-Market
Then Dr. Adarsh Patil from Bangalore, India, presented Heathcare e-Market, again, an online exchange for the medical tourism industry where patients and providers around the globe would transact to find the best solutions for the medical tourism needs. The business model Adarsh is proposing is a per lead compensation structure, which seems perfectly reasonable. However, the business is at a pure concept stage, and most of the details are yet to be fleshed out. I like the idea, but to go from idea to financing, there is a long road for Adarsh to travel still.

You can select the business you like best of those discussed today through a poll on the 1M/1M Facebook page.

The recording of today’s roundtable can be found here. Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here. 

I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8:00 a.m. PDT on the following dates:

Thursday, August 4, Register Here.
Thursday, August 11, Register Here.
Thursday, August 25, Register Here.

And if you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to join the 1M/1M premium program. If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program and the FAQs. You can also take the 1M/1M self-assessment test here. If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note, that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.

I also invite you to join the 1M/1M mailing list for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you.

This segment is a part in the series : Roundtable Recap
. March 25 – A Mixed Bag Of Advice . April 1 – Bootstrapping Tips . April 8 – A Focus On E-Commerce . April 15 – Small Is OK; The Goal Is Profitability . April 22 – The Original Runners . April 29 – Finding The Right Direction . May 6 – Defining Value Proposition . May 20 – Validation, Validation, Validation . May 27 – Is The Venture Worth Your Time? . June 3 – Defining Market Segments . June 10 – Efficient Targeting . June 17 – Online Education Startups . June 24 – Three Startups That Can Hit One Million Dollars . July 1 - Get Your Pricing Model Validated . July 8 - The EJ Methodology . July 15 - A Market Of Late Adopters . July 22 - Bootstrap Using Services . July 29 - Startups In Malaysia . August 5 - Paying Customers =>Validation =>Valuation . August 19 - Niche E-Commerce Is Great For Bootstrapping . August 26 - 85%-90% Of Search Traffic Comes From Organic Search . September 2 - Find High Velocity Channels . September 9 - Open Opportunities In Cloud Computing And Rural BPO . September 16 – 5 Cloud Computing Opportunities for Entrepreneurs . September 23 - Do Not Spray And Pray . September 30 - Investors Don't Fund Broad Ideas . October 7 - Try To Get At Least $2M Pre-Money In Seed Round Valuation . October 14 - Professional Investors Do Not Invest In $20 Million Markets . October 21 - Bootstrapping Comes In Many Flavors . October 28 – Convert Potential Competitors To Partners . November 4 - Premium Lounge Sneak Preview . November 11 - African Tech Entrepreneurs Emerging . November 18 - Not Coming To The Rescue Of Victory . December 2 - Niche Marketplace Businesses Can Be Interesting . December 9 - Where Should You Raise Money? . December 16 - Top 10 Tech Trends To Watch . January 6 - Top 10 Vertical and Social Web Trends For The Decade . January 13 - Top 10 Online Advertising Trends For The Decade . January 20 - Personalization Remains An Open Problem . January 27 - Non-Dilutive Financing Through Revenue Sharing . February 3 - Indian Entrepreneurs Are Maturing . February 10 - When Keywords Are Competitive . February 17 - Indian Company Plugs Gap In Google’s Enterprise Solution . February 24 - VCs, Angels, Incubators, Accelerators – What Are You Doing With Your Rejects? . March 3 - Spotlight On The Northwest . March 10 - Spotlight On India . March 17 - Spotlight On Latin And Central America . March 24 - 75th Session Spotlights The Midwest . March 31 - Microsoft’s $100,000 India Startup Challenge Grant . April 6 - 1M/1M Announces Important Partnership With MAD Incubator, Malaysia . April 9 - 1M/1M Announces Partnership With TiE Chennai . April 16 - 1M/1M Partners With Indian Angel Network Incubator . April 17 - High-Octane Energy In Pune . April 21- Incubators Are Reaching Out To 1M/1M . April 28 - Guerrilla P.R. & SEO Most Profitable Customer Acquisition Strategies . May 5 - Ownership Matters . May 12 - Two Really Cool Companies . May 19, Making Money From Blogs . May 26 - Twitter, LinkedIn - Why Not Affiliates? . June 2 - 1M/1M And Incubators - What We Have Learned . June 9 - Silicon Valley . June 16 - Exciting Companies Lined Up For Microsoft Startup Grant Finals . June 23 - New Assessment Tool For Entrepreneurs . June 30 - Continued International Participation . July 21 - Crowd Sourced Funding Exchanges - An Emerging Trend . July 28 - Investors And Incubators Need To Look At Pre-Incubation . August 4 - How Do You Bootstrap Freemium Ventures? . August 11 - Menlo Park And The Silicon Valley Renaissance . August 25 - How To Use Twitter For Lead Generation . September 1 - Fall Call To Action . September 8 - A View Into Israeli Start-ups . September 15 - Do Your Homework First . September 22 - How Do You Catalyze A Region’s Entrepreneurship? . September 29 - From Poland To Argentina . October 6 - Dedicated To Steve Jobs, Reinforcing Mission To Restructure Capitalism . October 13 - FREE Is Not A Business Model . October 20 - Non-profits And For-profits . October 27 - Check Out Stanzr . November 3 - VCs Are Not Always Right . November 17 - Business Schools And Early Stage Entrepreneurship . December 1 - 1M/1M Premium Company Freshdesk Wins Funding From Accel Partners . December 8 - Three Open Opportunities For 2012 . December 15 - Web 3.0 And Social Dancing; Romania Emerging . December 22 - Free Apps, Ad-Supported Business Models => Dangerous! . January 5 - ERP Galore . January 12-13 - Spotlight On IIT Kharagpur, India . January 19 - Are Media Sites Fundable? . January 26th - Spotlight On Jacksonville, Florida . February 2 - YCombinator vs. 1M/1M . February 9 - Are You Fundable? . February 16 - What’s Happening In Turkey? . February 23 - Microsoft Israel To Offer 1M/1M Scholarships . March 1 - Strategy Gaps Need To Be Plugged . March 12 - Winners Of Microsoft Israel Scholarships . March 15 - Spotlight On 3 Day Startup Tel-Aviv . April 3 - Rendezvous In Bangalore . April 12 - More From Indian Entrepreneurs . April 19 - Tyranny Of The TAM . April 26 - A Rare Women-Only Session . May 3 - Some Wonderful Opportunities With Corporate Partners . May 10 - BlueSnap-Elance Contest Applications Deadline This Weekend . May 22 - Winners Of TechHub-A&N Media Battle Of The Startups Contest In London Win 1M/1M Scholarships