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.

Towards Smart Grids: eMeter CEO Cree Edwards (Part 1)

Cree co-founded eMeter Corporation in 1999 and serves as its CEO. In 1984 he co-founded CellNet Data Systems, which provided advanced electricity metering data and communications to utilities via wireless networks. Cree has revolutionized the utility industry, bringing much-needed efficiency and vision.

SM: Take me back to where your story begins. What is the genesis of your entrepreneurial journey?

CE: I was born a mile from here at the old Stanford Hospital, which I believe is still operational. My parents moved here from Long Beach. >>>

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Towards Paperless Contracts: EchoSign CEO Jason Lemkin (Part 1)

Jason Lemkin is CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, an electronic signature automation service. He was previously an entrepreneur-in-residence at Storm Ventures and co-founder of NanoGram Devices, Prior to his work in technology he was a corporate counsel at Venture Law Group. He earned a BA from Harvard and a JD from Berkeley. You can find his full bio here.

SM: Jason, take us back to where your story begins. Where did you grow up?

JL: Like a lot of entrepreneurs my age, I grew up during the first PC revolution with the Apple II. I was born in Boston but grew up in Los Angeles. >>>

PBX as SaaS: RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis (Part 1)

Vlad is the CEO and founder of RingCentral, which provides VoIP, hosted PBX, voicemail, fax and Internet call waiting services through platforms such as RingCentral.com, Pagoo.com and Buzme.com. Prior to RingCentral he was the founder and CEO of Ring Zero, a provider of desktop voice and fax communication software for the OEM market. He graduated magna cum laude from San Francisco State with degrees in computer science.

SM: Vlad, where do you come from?

VS: I was born in Odessa, which used to be part of Russia and is now part of Ukraine. I came to the Bay Area to finish high school. >>>

Transforming Healthcare: Epocrates CEO Kirk Loevner (Part 1)

Kirk Loevner began his career with VisiCorp in the early 1980s before moving to Apple, where he worked for the next ten years. Afterwards he worked at Silicon Graphics, as the CEO of Internet Shopping Network, and then founded PublishOne in November 1998. He then was the CEO and chairman of Pinnacor (ScreamingMedia) from December 2001 to January 2004.

SM: Kirk, take us back to where your story begins. Where are you from? Where did you grow up?

KL: I was born outside of Philadelphia in 1957. I ended up going to college in Boston, to Tufts, for a degree in computer science. >>>

Commercial OpenSource: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson (Part 1)

Rod Johnson is an accomplished author (‘Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development’ and ‘J2EE without EJB’), a world authority on Java and J2EE, and an entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of SpringSource, which builds Java infrastructure software. Rod holds a BA with Honors in Computer Science, Mathematics and Musicology as well as a PhD from the University of Sydney.

SM: I detect an accent. Where is that from?

RJ: I come from Sydney, Australia. My accent has been confused because I also lived in London for seven years. I have lived in the Bay Area for a bit over a year now. >>>

The Audacity of Tom Costello (Part 1)

Tom Costello has a PhD in computer science from Stanford University. His emphasis is artificial intelligence (AI), and aside from teaching he has worked as a researcher at Stanford for DARPA and the U.S. Air Force. He was one of the founders of Xift, and he later worked at IBM. Today his research in the area of search architecture and relevance methods is truly groundbreaking and is at the heart of Cuil, the search engine he cofounded with his wife, Anna, a former Google employee.

SM: Tom, take us back to where your journey starts.

TC: I am from Ireland. I went to college at Trinity College, Dublin. I was in Ireland in 1990, when it was in the midst of a deep recession. >>>

From Laid-off Engineer To Successful Startup CEO: Michelle Munson of Aspera (Part 1)

Michelle Munson is CEO of Aspera, a company she began after being laid off. Aspera was her realization that she could not only control her own career path but also create jobs for other people in a culture she established. This story is great inspiration for the thousands who have been let go by their employers.

SM: Michelle, where does your story begin?

MM: I grew up in Kansas, on a farm. My family is a five-generation farm family that raises Angus cattle as well as wheat, corn and soybeans. >>>

Building The Small Business CRM Solution: CircleDog CEO Charlie Crystle (Part 1)

Charlie Crystle is passionate about music, nonprofit institutions and entrepreneurism. He has founded several companies including his current effort, CircleDog. His past ventures include ChiliSoft, which was purchased by Sun. He focuses on product usability, economics and policy, all of which are themes which can be found in each of his successful ventures.

SM: Let’s go back to your beginning. Where are you from? What kind of family did you grow up in?

CC: I am from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My father was a doctor. Lancaster is largely a farming community but the town itself is 60,000 and the county is 450,000, so it is not too small. It is a religiously conservative part of the country. >>>

Accidental Entrepreneur: Cryptography Research President Paul Kocher (Part 1)

Paul founded Cryptography Research, where he now serves as president and chief scientist. He has held positions at RSA Security and was a founding member of Valicert, Inc. (Tumbleweed). Among his notable accomplishments are his work on SSL 3.0, the DES Key Search machine, and discovering timing attacks and Differential Power Analysis. He holds a B.S. from Stanford University.

SM: To start, take us through your background. Where are you from?

PK: My mother is Canadian, although whatever accent she passed on has mostly been beaten out of me. I grew up in Oregon, where my father was a university professor. >>>

From Dyslexia to SugarCRM: John Roberts (Part 1)

John Roberts is CEO and co-founder of SugarCRM. He established SugarCRM’s commercial open source business model. Today the Sugar community is one of the largest open source communities on the Web. >>>