How Do You Connect Deeply To Silicon Valley?

By guest author Irina Patterson Amidst widespread talk of tech bubbles, it is clear that Silicon Valley is back. Sramana Mitra, the owner of this blog and founder of the 1M/1M Program for entrepreneurs, has been a Silicon Valley insider for more than 15 years. She can connect the dots and open many Silicon Valley

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Bootstrapping A Healthcare IT Startup To 50 Million: Eliza Corporation President Alexandra Drane (Part 7)

Sramana: You said that Eliza achieved profitability in two years with a lean, bootstrapped operation. What year was that, and what is the story from that point until today? Alexandra Drane: That was in 2001, once we had the platform we started receiving information from people in real time. We had a speech recognition system

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How Not To Waste Your Money On Useless Things

By guest author Irina Patterson Entrepreneurs often say to me, “I love 1M/1M. I’d love to join, but I don’t have $1,000.” Then we talk some more and I find out that they spend $15,000 on building their site without validating their idea. Or, they paid someone $2,000 to write their business plan in hope

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1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: Knowlagent, Alpharetta, Georgia

Anyone who’s ever worked in a call center knows that there’s a certain ebb and flow of incoming calls. Often, during the ebb, call center agents have little or no other work to do. Alpharetta, Georgia–based Knowlagent seeks to minimize the amount of down time call center agents have.

Bootstrapping A Healthcare IT Startup To 50 Million: Eliza Corporation President Alexandra Drane (Part 6)

Sramana: Essentially you allowed your professional contacts to validate the product before you built it. Did you follow their use cases or your own path? Alexandra Drane: I understood why they were approaching our technology in the ways that they were. Our technology had the benefit of perceived anonymity, which allowed them to go after

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How To Reduce The Infant Entrepreneur Mortality Rate

By guest author Irina Patterson Over the past year, we have been talking to various investors – VCs and angels, and incubators and accelerators. What we discovered that the entire startup ecosystem is structured to look for and invest in the less than 1% of the entrepreneurs who are ready and fundable. For example, Highway

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1Mby1M Deal Radar 2011: Cellit, Chicago, Illinois

With the advent of smart phones, the mobile marketplace has grown by leaps and bounds. People send emails, make purchases, or update their Facebook statuses with their cell phones as much as if not more than they use them to make phone calls. Today’s consumers are  more mobile than ever before, and reaching them is

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Bootstrapping A Healthcare IT Startup To 50 Million: Eliza Corporation President Alexandra Drane (Part 5)

Sramana: Once you found the speach recognition technology that led to Eliza, what was your next step? Alexandra Drane: At that time I was 28 years old. I knew I was not yet ready to be a CEO, but I wanted to be involved and knew I had to get a team who could help

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