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.

Built To Enjoy: Andrew Fox’s 100% Owned $30M ClubPlanet (Part 1)

Andrew Fox is the cofounder and chairman of ClubPlanet and the CEO of Track Entertainment. He has spent the past six years running entertainment and service companies. ClubPlanet is the largest and most comprehensive nightlife destination on the Internet and provides content, listings, tickets, and many other features for nightlife events in over 35 cities around the world. Fox is also the founder of 3-G Communications, which finances and leases cellular towers in North America. He is a member of the executive committee of the Ad Club of New York and director of the New York City chapter of ChairScholars Foundation, Inc., a national nonprofit organization that provides scholarships to children and adolescents with disabilities.

SM: To start, tell me about yourself. Where do you come from? What is your background?

AF: I am from New York City. I was born here, but I moved to Florida when I was five. My mom has very bad allergies and needed to move there. I grew up in Tampa, Florida, which was a great place to grow up, but I always knew that I wanted to move back to New York. >>>

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From Free To Premium With Ease: YouSendIt Cofounder Ranjith Kumaran (Part 1)

Ranjith Kumaran is the founder and chief technology officer for YouSendIt. Prior to YouSendIt, Kumaran held marketing positions at Verisity Design, and he was the director of sales engineering at Celoxica. He has also worked as a software systems engineer at Red Hat. Kumaran received a bachelor of engineering degree in computer engineering from McGill University and is an active member of TiE Silicon Valley.

SM: Ranjith, tell me about yourself. Where does your story begin?

RK: I was born in England. My father was there doing his PhD in physical chemistry. I was only there for about a year, but I am still pulling for England in the World Cup. >>>

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 1)

Gary Steele is the CEO of Proofpoint, a company which is a leader in e-mail security, data loss prevention, and e-mail archiving solutions. Prior to joining Proofpoint, Gary served as the CEO of Portera, an applications company delivering solutions for the professional services industry. Prior to Portera, Gary was the vice president and general manager of the middleware and data warehousing product group at Sybase, Inc., an organization of more than 350 people spanning four regions and generating $150 million in revenue. Gary’s prior experience includes business development, marketing, and engineering roles at Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. He has a B.S. in computer science from Washington State University.

SM: Gary, let’s begin with a review of your background. Where are you from?

GS: I grew up in a small agricultural community of 600 people in the Northwest. It was a million miles away from technology. >>>

Cleantech In Food: Purfresh CEO Dave Cope (Part 1)

Dave Cope joined Purfresh in 2004 as chief marketing officer and was promoted to CEO in 2006. Prior to Purfresh he was president and CEO of BizGenics and held a variety of executive positions for Extricity, Marimba, Illustra, and IBM. Mr. Cope holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biochemistry from San Jose State University.

SM: Dave, let’s start with your background. Where are you from?

DC: I was born and raised in San Jose. My family is from the Bay Area as well. My grandfather played football for the University of Santa Clara, went on to play for the New York Giants, and then opened a chain of sporting good stores across the western United States. >>>

Creative Bootstrapping To A 350 Million Dollar Exit: Nimsoft CEO Gary Read (Part 1)

Gary Read has been the president and CEO of Nimsoft for the past six years. He is a more than twenty-year veteran of the high-tech world, with extensive expertise in monitoring and systems management software. Prior to Nimsoft, Gary was vice president of sales and marketing at RiverSoft, a provider of advanced network management products, where he was a key member of the executive team that led the company to a successful IPO and its eventual acquisition by Micromuse. He has also been the vice president of marketing at BMC Software and has held sales and marketing leadership roles at Boole & Babbage and MAXM Systems.

SM: Let’s start at the beginning of your story, Gary. What is your background?

GR: I am originally from England. I grew up in a suburb of London. >>>

Artist As An Entrepreneur Photographer: Tom Mangelsen’s Images of Nature (Part 1)

I ran into Tom Mangelesen in Jackson, Wyoming, while on a trip to visit Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Tom has a wonderful gallery there, and as I looked at his wildlife photography I started talking to Tom’s business partner and longtime friend about the gallery. I discovered a lot of interesting aspects about the business of art, and what it takes to be an artist entrepreneur. >>>

Pioneering SaaS In Business Process Optimization: Ariba’s Kevin Costello (Part 1)

SM: Kevin, let’s start with some historical perspective of Ariba. You joined the company after it went public, correct?

KC: Ariba was a company that was one of the founding members of the dot-com explosion that occurred in the mid to late 1990s. It was focused on helping organizations optimize a business process. The process Ariba worked on was the procurement process. >>>

From Zero To One Hundred Million: TheLadders.com CEO Marc Cenedella (Part 1)

Marc Cenedella is the cofounder and CEO of TheLadders.com. Founded in 2003, TheLadders.com is a premier online job board for jobs with salaries of more than $100,000. Prior to TheLadders.com, Cenedella worked as a senior vice president of finance and operations at HotJobs.com and was an associate vice president at The Riverside Company, a New York-based private equity firm. He graduated with a BA in political science from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.

SM: Marc, let’s start at the beginning of your story. What is your background?

MC: I went to school at Yale, where I studied political science for my undergraduate degree. Coming out of school I had no idea what business was about. I knew I wanted to go into business, but I was not really sure what that would entail. I remember that I had to ask my uncle what the difference between sales and marketing was. >>>

Monetizing People Search: MyLife.com CEO Jeff Tinsley (Part 1)

Jeff Tinsley is the founder and CEO of MyLife. He created the company in 2002 under the name Reunion.com after meeting his wife at his 10-year high school reunion. The company now has a membership of more than 50 million. Prior to MyLife, Tinsley was a founder and CEO of GreatDomains.com, the world’s leading secondary domain name marketplace. At the end of 2000, the company was acquired by publicly-traded VeriSign, the Internet’s leading domain name registry, for a reported $100 million. Tinsley is also involved in a number of private Internet companies as an investor and advisor.

SM: Jeff, to begin, tell me about yourself. Where does your story begin?

JT: I am an Internet geek. I have been in the Internet space since 1994. >>>

Online K-12 Education IPO In The Great Recession: Archipelago Learning Co-founders Cameron Chalmers, Dave Muzzo, And CEO Tim McEwen (Part 1)

David Muzzo and Cameron Chalmers cofounded Study Island in May 2000 and have been vice president and director, respectively, since January 2007. Both received a BS from Vanderbilt University. Prior to founding Study Island, Cameron served as a software engineering lead developer for Lucent Technologies, and David founded Captive Marketing Concepts, which he sold in 1999. In early 2009 the group rebranded under the name Archipelago Learning, keeping Study Island as the core product while branching out into other “islands of excellence” united under a single brand.

SM: To begin, I would like to get the personal background of the first character in the story. Where does the story begin?

DM: Cam and I met in college, and we were fraternity brothers. We went to school at Vanderbilt. >>>