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.

Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Aaron is a co-founder of Pluralsight, where he serves as the chief executive officer. Aaron has spent years developing course materials and teaching professional developers throughout the world. He has presented at many popular developer conferences like PDC, TechEd, and VSLive! Microsoft recognized Aaron as an MVP in the “Connected Systems” developer community for eight years. Aaron has written numerous books, articles, and white papers, including the Essential XML Quick Reference (Addison Wesley, 2001), Essential XML (Addison Wesley, 2000), and his popular columns in MSDN Magazine.

Sramana: Aaron, let’s begin your story by reviewing your background. Where do your roots of entrepreneurship originate?

Aaron Skonnard: I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I was always in love with computers. My father purchased one of the first Apple computers as well as one of the very first Compaq PCs. He taught me the basics of programming and things that he had learned on his own. He knew that computers were going to be the future of the world. He exposed us to that as kids, and I just latched on to it. I started writing programs in BASIC in the early days of the PC. >>>

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Building India’s Blue Nile: CaratLane CEO Mithun Sacheti (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

[Also check out my Entrepreneur Journeys book, Seed India – How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap in India]

Mithun Sacheti is the founder of CaratLane, an online jeweler in India and one of the country’s leading ecommerce companies. Mithun grew up in the jewelry industry and prior to founding CaratLane, he opened new stores for his family business throughout the southern regions of the country. He has studied gemology in California and Bombay.

Sramana: Mithun, let’s start at the beginning of your story. What is your journey that leads up to CaratLane?

Mithun Sacheti: My family has been in entrepreneurship for many generations. My father moved to Bombay from Rajasthan to set up his own jewelry stores in Bombay. I was born in Bombay in 1978 and I did my education there before moving to California to study gemology engineering and manufacturing. >>>

Bootstrapping to $6M from Durgapur, West Bengal: Pinnacle CAD CEO Bimal Patwari (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Sramana: Bimal, let’s start with your personal story. Where does your entrepreneurial journey begin?

Bimal Patwari: I went to college at IIT Kharagpur where I studied electronics, and then did mygraduate work in marketing and finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. >>>

Building a $5M+ Digital Design Services Firm from Kolkata: Indus Net CEO Abhishek Rungta (Part 1)

Abhishek Rungta is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of Indus Net, a digital design services firm based in Kolkata that employs more than 500 people. This story is an example of emerging entrepreneurship from Kolkata, India. Abhishek recieved his bachelors in commerce in accountancy, graduating with honors from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. He has also earned an MS in multimedia technology from the University of Bath, UK. Abhishek is also a private investor and a proponent of bootstrapped entrepreneurship.

Sramana: Abhishek, let’s go to the beginning of your personal story. What is your background as it pertains to the context of your entrepreneurial journey?

Abhishek Rungta: When I went to school, I got a bachelors degree in commerce. At that time after your morning classes were finished, you had the rest of the day to do something else. >>>

A $14M Bootstrapped Family Business in Eugene, Oregon: Palo Alto Software Founder Tim Berry and CEO Sabrina Parsons (Part 1)

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software, and he is also the originator of plan-as-you-go business planning. He writes at Planning, Startups, Stories, one of the most popular small business blogs.

Sabrina Parsons has served as the CEO of Palo Alto Software since 2007. Prior to this role she co-founded a software company with her husband in 2001, a company that was purchased by Palo Alto Software in 2002. She is the president of the Princeton Entrepreneurs Network and a significant supporter of entrepreneurs. She blogs as MommyCEO.org.

Sramana: Tim, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from?

Tim Berry: I started adult life with a masters in journalism. My goal was to have a great journalism career. I started with United Press International, which was very well known back in the 1970s. It was wire service journalism, and I was in Mexico City covering hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, kidnappings, and so on. I was young and it was a fun job. It did not pay anything, but I loved it. >>>

Bootstrapping Zero to 7M from Kolkata: FusionCharts CEO Pallav Nadhani (Part 1)

Pallav Nadhani is the CEO of Fusion Charts, a software suite that allows creation of interactive charts for web and enterprise applications. Pallav completed his primary schooling in Bihar before moving to Kolkata to work in his father’s web design company. After a few years he launched FusionCharts. This story showcases entrepreneurship in Kolkata, India.

Sramana: Pallav, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Tell us a bit about where you are from and what kind of background you grew up in. What is the genesis of your entrepreneurial spirit?

Pallav Nadhani: I grew up in a small town in Bihar, India, until I was 15. After my basic schooling was completed, I moved to Kolkata. My dad had moved there a few years prior to start a web design agency. When I first moved to Kolkata, I helped my dad with some of the graphics and web application design. >>>

British Startup Teaching English: Shiv Rajendran, Co-founder of LanguageLab, London (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Shiv Rajendran is the co-founder and operations director of LanguageLab, a company founded in 2005 aiming to teach English by leveraging the capabilities of virtual worlds. He is a leading educational technologist frequently speaking at conferences on virtual world education. He is involved with the EU-funded projects and advises on virtual worlds in academic contexts. He has extensive experience building, testing and managing complex systems both in secure and public (online) environments. Shiv has a 1st class honors degree in computer science from Brunel University as well as a Master‘s degree with merit from Kings College, London.

Sramana: Shiv, let’s go back to the beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from, what is your backstory?

Shiv Rajendran: I was born in London in the early 1980s to a Sri Lankan parents who had migrated over the decade before. I grew up in London under the traditional British state education system. I was dyslexic and actually did quite poorly, and unfortunately I was not diagnosed with dyslexia until I was 18. >>>

An SEO-Driven Bootstrapping Success: Benchmark Email CEO Curt Keller (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Curt Keller is the founder and CEO of Benchmark Email, a global email marketing services company. After buying his first business in 2000, Keller grew Benchmark Email from a small operation with a handful of employees to a multinational company offering email marketing services for English, German, Chinese, Italian, Spanish and Japanese-speaking clients. Keller is also an outspoken advocate for good email marketing practices, and he currently writes on this topic for Allbusiness.com, Imediaconnection.com, and Recharge Asia Magazine.

Sramana: Curt, let’s go back to the beginning of your story. Where are you from? What is your background?

Curt Keller: I grew up in Southern California. I am a home-grown kid and I have been here my entire life. My entrepreneurial fever came from my father, who was not an entrepreneur. He was an engineer by trade, and when I was 12 or 13 we used to spend countless hours looking over real estate magazines. >>>

Replacing Founders with CEOs: A Discussion with Paul Doscher, CEO, Lucid Imagination (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Paul Doscher is the CEO of Lucid Imagination, a company that delivers enterprise-grade search development platforms based on Apache Lucene/Solr open source search. Prior to Lucid, Paul held the position of CEO for Exalead Inc, a global provider of enterprise search, where he led the company from 2008 through 2011. In 2003, Paul became CEO and one of the principal founders of JasperSoft. In 2000, Paul joined VMware as the company’s EVP of worldwide field operations, where he defined and executed the distribution strategy that formed the basis of the company’s success. Earlier in his career, Paul held positions at several companies, including general manager of the Americas for Business Objects (now SAP), vice president of worldwide marketing and business development for Entrust, and vice president of U.S. channels for Oracle.

Sramana: Paul, let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where did you grow up, and what led you down this path?

Paul Doscher: I was raised in a lower-middle-class family in the Bronx in New York City. I went through a reasonably decent parochial school and then attended Georgia Tech on an ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] scholarship. That is the only way I could have gone to school. >>>

Bootstrapping to 8 Million from Brittany – Digitaleo CEO Jocelyn Denis (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Jocelyn Denis is the founder and CEO of Digitaleo, a premium mobile marketing solutions company. Prior to founding Digitaleo he served as a product manager at Ubisoft and worked in sales for Kraft. He started Digitaleo in Brittany, France, out of his attic before the smart phone revolution. Today Digitaleo is an international company with a solid foundation.

Sramana: Jocelyn, let’s go back to the beginning of your story. Tell us about you. Who are you and what kind of environment did you grow up in?

Jocelyn Denis: I come from France. I grew up in the western region of France, and there is a lot of history there. When I was a youngster, I really wanted to become an entrepreneur someday. >>>