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. 

Must-Read Posts on Corporate Innovation

Anyone involved in a corporate innovation program soon learns that it is quite complex to manage the nuances of such programs and get them to work right.

Last year I spent half a day with approximately 40 Fortune 500 Chief Innovation Officers at Xerox PARC, and discussed our experience with corporate innovation methodology through the1M/1M Incubator In A Box program. A few months later, Jim Euchner, the CIO of Goodyear, interviewed me for the Research-Technology Management journal.
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Featured Videos

A Startup Idea for Indian SMB Channels

If you are trying to sell B-to-B software to Indian SMBs, you know that it’s a very big market, and by and large, inaccessible.

There are hardly any mature channels through which to cater to this audience of customers profitably.
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Startup Ideas Combining Italian Design and Indian Craftsmanship in Fashion

If you’ve read Vision India 2020, you may recall a project called Urja. In it, I explored the idea of creating a fusion brand with Italian designers working with Indian artisans and craftsmen specializing in different domains such as Chikkan from Lucknow, Tasar from Bengal, etc. This project, like all the Vision India 2020 projects, was designed to be a very large company, and hence the distribution and financing strategy was accordingly different.

Now I have a different lens on. I am thinking of small-scale ideas that will stimulate a thousand new brands, each focused on a specific craft, a specific style of customer, and sell through channels that are easily accessible and not very expensive.
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Entrepreneurs: What You Need to do to Get PR Coverage Without Funding

The entrepreneurship media has a very annoying habit: they tend to only cover funding news and write about funded companies.

This puts all those companies that do not have any funding at a grave disadvantage. In many cases, entrepreneurs will need to work their way to become fundable by climbing the rungs of the credibility radar.

And during that phase, they need to get the word out there that they exist, they offer something of value, and customers ought to look at them.

Very few business writers ask the question: What is your revenue?

Most ask the question: How much funding have you raised? From whom?
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How Technology is Ruining Romance

Technology makes a lot of things possible that are detrimental to society. One of them is Tinder and other hook up apps.

These days, you can swipe for love.

These days, you can swipe for sex.

And people are doing it.

There’s a problem, though.
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Startup Idea: E-Commerce Focused on High-end Ceramics

As with other Vision India 2020 ideas, Gagori was also originally designed as a billion dollar project. It focused on using Japanese and Italian designers working with Indian potters and ceramicists to create high-end dinner sets, vases, platters, pots, etc. You can read it here.

Once again, there is a comparable opportunity with some of the same ideas, but without the need to scale at exponential pace. You could build a set of e-commerce businesses that specifically focus on high-end ceramics.
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Future of Artificial Intelligence: The Triumph of Communism?

I have written several pieces already on my deep concerns about the kind of society we’re moving towards in the next 30-50 years as technology-induced changes sweep through society, rendering hundreds of millions of people unemployable.

Future of Work: Utopia or Dystopia?
Future of Artificial Intelligence: Brexit, Trump and Other Calamities
Artificial Intelligence: Just Because We Can, Does It Mean That We Should?
Future of Artificial Intelligence: All Play, No Work Society
Future of Artificial Intelligence: Demonetization

It seems to me that the end game in this thought experiment is the triumph of communism. Let me explain.
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A Startup Idea for Specialized Gift eCommerce

In Vision India 2020, there is a project called Oishi. It’s a gift e-commerce brand that has specialized capabilities for tracking occasions for gift giving, what gift was given to whom for what occasion, etc. It also has excellent merchandising such that consumers can buy unique gifts that are truly differentiated. You can read the chapter here, India’s Stylish Online Gift Retailer.

Positioned as a high-end online gift retailer, Oishi offered a unique portfolio of merchandise catering to busy, professional, but still style- and taste-conscious, women. We served as personal shoppers for this demographic, saving one of their scarcest resources: time.

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Apple, Google, and Their Offshore Cash Stashes: A Proposal

Apple holds over $180 billion in offshore cash that it has hardly paid any taxes on. If they brought it back to the US, they would owe over $50 billion in taxes. Google has over $40 billion stashed away.

Big numbers. Unfair practices. What’s to be done?

I have a proposal.

Both Apple and Google are heavily invested in the digital content business, especially music and video/film. Apple’s iTunes and Google’s YouTube are excellent content distribution and consumption platforms.

There is a slight problem, however.

Content producers, very talented ones, traditionally have struggled to fund their projects.
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Future of Artificial Intelligence: Demonetization

As a follow-up to my series of articles on Artificial Intelligence, my friend Som Das sent me an article by Peter Diamandis on demonetization and the “abundance” that will be created with the help of technology.

People are concerned about how AI and robotics are taking jobs and destroying livelihoods… reducing our earning capacity, and subsequently destroying the economy.

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