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.

Stardoll for Little Girls: Mattias Miksche (Part 1)

I covered Stardoll in the Deal Radar series. Here’s the story from CEO Mattias Miksche.

SM: Please describe your personal background : Family, upbringing, early career, etc. leading up to this venture.

MM: I have a multicultural background. Austrian dad, German mom – they came to Sweden during/following World War II. I was born & raised in Sweden, grew up speaking German at home, Swedish at the playground. I also spent a year as a high school exchange student in Halstead, Kansas (population 1,017), which was a huge culture shock but a great life experience. I am still very close with my ‘American’ extra family. >>>

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Building an Ambitious SaaS Company: Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire (Part 1)

In our Enterprise 3.0 coverage, I bring you, next, a conversation with Michael Gregoire, CEO of Taleo (Nasdaq: TLEO). Taleo had 2007 sales of $128 Million, and a market cap of close to $500 Million. In this case-study, we will do a deep-dive into the company’s business with Michael. >>>

Vertical Travel Ad Network CEO Cree Lawson (Part 1)

In the world of entrepreneurship, a universally accepted doctrine is doing more with less. In this case study series, I bring you an entrepreneur who has done exactly that. Cree Lawson, founder and CEO of Travel Ad Network (TAN), is our guest this time, and will share his story with all its blood, sweat and tears. Cree’s venture also aligns with the Vertical Ad Network trend that we have been discussing here.

SM: Cree, please tell us about your personal background.

CL: I guess I’m the product of suburban America circa 1980—a time when there really wasn’t anything more to life than contact sports, loud music and the knowledge that the Russians really were coming at any moment. At least that’s all I knew. When I wasn’t dreaming, reading or knocking the crap out of my friends on a field behind the school, you’d find me cleaning floors at cookie stores and pet shops to buy parts for my exceptionally loud car stereo. Yeah—I was that guy. At one point my stereo was worth more than my car, in fact. But the car was only worth $1,000 so that wasn’t hard to beat. >>>

eBay of Latin America: Mercado Libre CEO Marcos Galperin (Part 1)

I did this interview in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during my recent trip consulting with Mercado Libre, Latin America’s largest online marketplace. I found the story fascinating, and wanted to capture it for my readers all over the world.

SM: I would like to hear the story of how you built Mercado Libre. Let’s start with your background; where did you grow up?

MG: I grew up here in Buenos Aires. When I was 17, I went to college in the US. I studied at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania from 1990 to 1994. When I graduated I came back and worked for an oil company which was the largest oil company in Argentina. It actually has just been privatized through an IPO on the NYSE. I did finance there for three and a half years. Afterwards I went to do an MBA at Stanford. When I came back I started Mercado Libre.

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Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 1)

SM: Jeff, let’s start with your background. Where do you come from, where did you go to school, and how did you get into technology? I know that you went to MIT, and I have to say that it is a pretty good school!

JK: Of course! We always referred to Harvard as the best school at Harvard Square when I was there. I grew up in Napa. My parents still live there, and my wife’s parents still live there. It was a small town upbringing. I studied engineering for my undergrad at the University of California.

I got involved in technology because I was interested in computer aided design. In the early 70’s you had to write most of your own software. You could not buy a CAD package, and everything you did was from scratch. I got very involved with graphics. >>>

Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 1)

SM: Let’s start the conversation with your story? Where did you grow up, where do you come from?

BH: I grew up in New Rochelle New York, which is right outside of New York City. I went to grammar school there and then went off to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for my BA degree. I was in the engineering school there and I spent most of my time in Operations Research which is like math, but not necessarily pure engineering. At the time computers were starting to get more popular, moving out of the white room with raised floors and more into industry. Right before graduation I went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation. The area I was assigned to was peripherals; terminals, printers, and tape readers; they were paper tape readers back then. We had just moved away from card readers. We also had just started with floppy disks.
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Serial Entrepreneur Zack Rinat on Model N (Part 1)

Zack Rinat is currently CEO and founder of Model N. He was a member of the 1995 founding team of NetDynamics.

SM: Let’s start by going over where you grew up, where you were educated, and your early background.

ZR: I am an Israeli, born and raised in Israel. Like every Israeli I had to serve in the military, so I spent four years in the service. I was in the Special Forces.

SM: Did you have to fight?

ZR: I was a company commander, and yes we had to do some crazy things. I was in the military for four years and then I felt I needed to regain my youth so I went backpacking throughout South America for a whole year. I came back to Israel and got the degree from the Israel campus of IIT. >>>

Making SMEs Run Smoothly: René Lacerte’s Cashview (Part 1)

René Lacerte is the founder and CEO of Cashview, a Web-based cash management solution delivered as a SaaS. Prior to Cashview, René founded PayCycle, which I covered recently. In this interview, we will trace the thinking of a serial entrepreneur who brings substantial SME and SaaS expertise to the table.

SM: René, I would like to start by reviewing your background. Where are you from, where did you grow up and where do your entrepreneurial roots come from?

RL: I come from four generations of entrepreneurs. My great grandfather had a couple of general stores, and my grandfather had seven businesses. His first was trading fish with [North American] Indians when he was teaching English to the Indians in northern Canada. He was using his salary to buy and trade fish. >>>

Speeding Up the Internet: Algorithms Guru and Akamai Founder Tom Leighton (Part 1)

Tom Leighton, co-founder of Akamai, is the Chief Scientist and a member of the Board of Director at Akamai. You can read more about him by visiting his bio here. Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) is the leading content delivery network (CDN) provider which, among other things, allows content providers to accelerate the delivery of Internet content and applications. In the past, I have addressed how Akamai stands to benefit from the online video surge, as well as how the actions of the Telco’s cost reduction could potentially impact Akamai. Here I talk with Tom about these issues, and more.

SM: Tom, I would like to start the conversation with some questions about your background.

TL: I grew up in Arlington, Virginia. I attended public schools there and then went to college at Princeton. I came to MIT for graduate school and got my PhD, after which I did a Post Doc here and stayed on as a professor of mathematics.

SM: Your field of research is primarily algorithms, correct?

TL: That is correct. I was interested in algorithms used on large-scale networks, and my core field of research was graph theory as applied to network optimization algorithms. >>>

Cracking the Very Small Business Market: PayCycle CEO Jim Heeger (Part 1)

For years, I have looked at the small business market as an opportunity that technology vendors need to attack. For years, however, the common wisdom in the venture circles have been that it is much too difficult to sell to small businesses. With the advent and popularity of Software-As-A-Service (SaaS), this sentiment has started changing. In this series, I will be speaking with Jim Heeger, CEO of PayCycle, a company that has mastered the art of selling payroll services to very small businesses.

Jim, in particular, is an authority in this discipline of building businesses around value propositions offered to small business customers. Before PayCycle, he ran Adobe’s Creative Professional Suite business. Jim also spent a number of years at Intuit running various pieces of Intuit’s accounting software business, also focused on small businesses.

My intent in bringing you this series (and subsequent ones on the topic) is that it would give you ideas on how to market and sell to this vast, untapped set of customers.

SM: Jim, I would like to start this interview with some background which explains where you are coming from. I know you have been involved in some very small business oriented plays which were vastly un-sexy until recently.

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