The Startup Velocity Question: What Hinders Acceleration in VC Funded Companies?

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. 

1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Bootstrapping

Over the course of two years, we have released over 70 courses on Udemy with the aim to democratize entrepreneurship education at scale globally. This series of posts aims to help you find the one you need easily and provide you with discount coupons.

From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 1)

Mahendra transitioned from a developer to a successful entrepreneur with his first company, exited it, and then started ACCELQ. ACCELQ already has 200 customers and is a profitable, bootstrapped company growing fast. A wonderful and inspiring story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Featured Videos

From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 1)

Francis has bootstrapped OpenVPN to $3M ARR with JUST $1M in financing. Wonderful story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Francis Dinha: I was born in northern Iraq in a place called Amadiya. I lived there until I was six years old. Due to the Baghdad-Iraqi war, we had to escape. There was a lot of bombing. I remember the bombing of our village. It reminds me of the current situation in Ukraine. We had to escape to Baghdad.

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 1)

Manish discusses his various experiences with customer validation in great depth, as well as his journey from being a hard-core developer geek to a successful entrepreneur CEO who has raised multiple rounds of venture capital from top firms including Sequoia Capital.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

From Hardcore Techie to Unicorn Entrepreneur: Dheeraj Pandey, Founder of Nutanix (Part 1)

Inspiring story of a passionate technical founder who has built one of the iconic fast growth Unicorns in the tech industry.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

From MIT PhD Student to Machine Learning Entrepreneur: Verta.ai CEO Manasi Vartak (Part 1)

Manasi made the journey from a technologist to a founder CEO, raised over $10M in funding, and has built over $5M in revenue with her first startup.
Amazing execution!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

From Developer to 2-Time Successful AI Entrepreneur with Exits: Behamics CEO Valon Xhafa (Part 1)

Valon is a software developer who made a successful transition to an entrepreneur and had a quick exit with his first venture.

His second venture is already at $5M+ in revenues with just a pre-seed round of financing. This venture, Behemics, has already received two acquisition offers. Fabulous story!

558th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Deepak Balakrishna, Adya (Part 1)

Deepak Balakrishna, Co-founder CEO of Adya, which was acquired by Qualys. We review his lessons from the trenches, steering a Bootstrapping to Exit transaction.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with at the 1Mby1M premium program with Adya, which was acquired by Qualys. Qualys, as you might know, is a public cyber security company. Adya was also in the cyber security space. I invited Deepak to talk about exit strategy and what he went through.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 1)

We’re big fans of solo entrepreneurs. Peter validated his business with real paying customers before he raised money; always the best strategy.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Building a Medication Management Startup Through Multiple Pivots: Medisafe Co-Founder and CTO Rotem Shor (Part 1)

Rotem represents yet another point of view of a software developer/technologist who successfully transitioned to an entrepreneur in an unfamiliar domain: pharmaceutical.

In that journey, he paired up with his brother who was more the business person in the duo. This is a common strategy for developers to become entrepreneurs, although, I generally
believe that developers can learn the business side as well.

The story also traces the pivots that were necessary to find product-market fit, as well as the failures that triggered each pivot.

From Hardcore Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Cybellum CEO Slava Bronfman (Part 1)

Slava was a Cyber Security geek in the Israeli military. In this interview, he tells the story of his transition to a successful entrepreneur.

Cybellum has been acquired by LG but continues to operate as an independent business unit subsidiary within the conglomerate. Awesome story with numerous lessons for geeks who aspire to be entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised and in what kind of background?