1Mby1M Founder Sramana Mitra wants entrepreneurs to not waste their time and money.
The waste stems from a widespread misunderstanding of how investors think.
Over 99% of founders chase funding before they are fundable.
Here, Sramana teaches how to build with customer money (otherwise known as revenue) until a startup reaches that fundable stage.
Once fundable, a startup can go to investors like a king, not a beggar.
I have been running 1Mby1M since 2010. I find myself saying to entrepreneurs ad nauseam that VCs want to invest in startups that can go from zero to $100 million in revenue in 5 to 7 years.
Startups that do not have what it takes to achieve velocity should not be venture funded.
Experienced VCs, over time, have developed heuristics to gauge what constitutes a high growth venture investment thesis.
>>>Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) reported a mixed second quarter this month, but a potential $900 million tariff headwind sent its stock falling 4% in the after-hours trading session. Yesterday’s tariff news brought some relief.
>>>Sramana Mitra: When you say you write the Series A checks, what are you looking for in the ventures that you’re willing to come in at the Series A? Let’s start with your specialty, which is worldwide B2B SaaS.
>>>These days, everyone seems to be a startup mentor. Whether they have ever done a startup or not, whether they have ever raised money or not, they are ready to advise entrepreneurs. I want to share with you some things we have learned in running the 1Mby1M program since 2008. Over 680 free mentoring roundtables. Over 300,000 entrepreneurs have participated.
We started experimenting with the roundtable format of online mentoring way back in the fall of 2008. At the time, 1Mby1M did not exist, not even in our heads. It wasn’t until my January 2010 New Year’s Resolution that the concept was born.
Piyush Kharbanda, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.
>>>I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – September
September | Sramana Mitra, 2019 | Watercolor, Ink | 16 x 20, On Paper
I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – August
August | Sramana Mitra, 2019 | Watercolor, Ink | 16 x 20, On Paper
Dean Guida, CEO and Founder at Infragistics, has a real passion for the elegance, simplicity, and beauty of software development. He has built a company celebrating these values and shared his story with me in 2021.
Sramana Mitra: We will start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?
Dean Guida: When I was six years old, my mom and dad got divorced. I moved to Miami, Florida. I saw how much my mom struggled to make money for us. When I was eight years old, I just wanted to work. I convinced the maintenance man in the apartment that I was living in to let me do his work. He would pay me off the books.
Today’s 684th FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, May 8, at 8 a.m. PDT / 11 a.m. EDT / 5 p.m. CEST / 8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup All are welcome!