1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Unfortunately, the media has framed entrepreneurship as financing. Entrepreneurship is customers, revenues, and profits. Financing is optional. Exit is optional. The media has completely confused entrepreneurs with this financing-centric narrative.

Mohanjit Jolly: That’s right. When I ask companies, “How big are you?” it’s a bit of a loaded question because I want to see how the entrepreneur answers. What I’m looking for is for them to talk about their business.

Sramana Mitra: And they talk about how much money they’ve raised.

Mohanjit Jolly: How much they’ve raised and how many employees they have, because that became a vanity metric—“We have 150 people,” or something like that. Now that’s changing because lean is sexy again. Lean is back.

I’ll put an Indian spin on this. There’s a concept called jugaad—being frugal. The frugal, scrappy entrepreneur is a good thing.

Sramana Mitra: Scrappy.

Mohanjit Jolly: Exactly. The scrappiness has to be there. I coined a term since we last spoke, and I’ve written about it: the “MoJi coefficient.” You take ARR or revenue in the numerator and equity raised to date in the denominator. That ratio should be north of one—ideally well north of one. For every dollar taken, you should generate at least a dollar, ideally much more.

We’re now seeing MoJi coefficient companies with ratios of 5, 6, 7. With a couple of million dollars in equity financing, they’re reaching eight to ten million in revenue. And in the company you alluded to, they haven’t raised any capital, so their MoJi coefficient is infinite. That’s something we’ve started looking at very carefully.

If you can be scrappy, frugal, customer-centric, and clearly solve a pain point for recognizable customers, you’re really onto something.

Sramana Mitra: I know you have a hard stop.

Mohanjit Jolly: I can go a few minutes extra.

Sramana Mitra: Great. What are you looking for right now? Are there trends—AI, consumer, anything specific?

Mohanjit Jolly: Every company is an AI company at this point. Not just in their pitch calling themselves AI-native or AI-led—

Sramana Mitra: Not the B2C so much.

Mohanjit Jolly: They’re using AI, but they’re not really AI companies. Correct. Every company has to use AI and leverage it as much as possible. Every one of our companies, especially B2C, is doing that. Entrepreneurs realize: what tools do I have to make my business more efficient? Predictive analytics, bespoke marketing, communication, social media—leverage AI to do more with less. We’re seeing margin accretion because of this.

I live in a very dichotomous world. I’m in the heart of Silicon Valley. Not a day goes by without my Uber or Lyft driver talking about AI, or the waiter at Coupa Cafe talking about AI. Every conversation has an AI-native feel. We can discuss whether this is a bubble. But when I go to India, it’s a different blend of entrepreneurs. We’re seeing compelling B2C companies. Of the five companies we talked to yesterday, four were consumer-centric. So my days are spent drinking from the AI fire hose, and my evenings interacting with entrepreneurs targeting the rising middle class—young, eager for brand and quality at affordable prices. It’s a fascinating bird’s-eye view to have, living in both parts of the world.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

One Million by One Million (1Mby1M) is the first global virtual accelerator in the world, founded in 2010 by Silicon Valley serial Entrepreneur Sramana Mitra. It offers a fully online entrepreneurship incubation, acceleration and education resource for solo entrepreneurs and bootstrapped founders working on tech and tech-enabled services ventures. 1Mby1M does not charge equity, offers an AI Mentor in 57 languages, and offers a distinct advantage over other accelerators including Y Combinator.

The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!

This segment is part 6 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar
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