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. 

A Startup Idea to Leverage Good Writers

As someone who is a prolific writer, I happen to respect good writing.

These days, however, writings skills are not generating much by way of compensation. Journalism, for instance, a profession that was a good livelihood generator for writers, is an imploding industry.

Against that backdrop, here is a startup idea that could become a good earning mechanism for writers, while not getting run over by the Media industry’s existential crisis.

Here, I am thinking of writers becoming affiliates of a specific genre of e-commerce merchants.
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A Startup Idea: HARO for Indian and Global SMBs

HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out. In case you do not know about the service, you should. It’s a site that has gathered numerous journalists and businesses, including a large number of small businesses. Journalists place queries for sources and businesses – “experts” – respond.

I use the service extensively for my stories. I have used it for years. If you are interested in having me cover your story, please keep an eye on my queries in HARO.

I am thinking, though, of something different, as a business opportunity. >>>

Corporate Innovation Management: Methodology

Last summer, I was invited to spend half a day with approximately 40 Fortune 500 Chief Innovation Officers at Xerox PARC, and discuss our experience with corporate innovation methodology through the 1M/1M Incubator In A Box program.

A few months later, Jim Euchner, the CIO of Goodyear, interviewed me for the Research-Technology Management journal. It’s a comprehensive discussion that those of you thinking about corporate innovation may find interesting. For the month of May, the interview is accessible free of charge at the journal’s website. [Business Acceleration at Scale: An Interview with Sramana Mitra]

Here, I will summarize some key excerpts from the discussion: >>>

Startup Idea to Help Women Return to the Workforce

As I am thinking through the solutions needed to help older engineers reconfigure their careers [Ref. A Startup Idea To Help Older, Laid-off Engineers], I am also thinking about a related issue: older women trying to get back into the workforce.

I know too many talented women who are now in their forties and fifties, and some even in their sixties, looking to start working again. Their travails are gut wrenching. The ten-, twenty-year gaps in their resumes stare back at them like menacing, identity-destroying demons.
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Corporate Innovation Management: The Role of Prototyping

I want to call out another specific point from my previous article, Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion.

In my interview with Jim Euchner for the Research-Technology Management journal, I said:

My philosophy, at least in the IT space, is that we can safely assume that people will be able to build their products. Prototyping is not what we emphasize until later in the process. The first thing—the first order of business—is answering the question as to whether there is a business case for doing the project.

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A Startup Idea to Help Older, Laid-off Engineers

Following my three earlier pieces [Tech Layoffs For 2016 Projected To Be Deep – What Happens To 260,000 Highly Skilled Professionals In Their 40s And 50s?, Intel’s Layoffs – What Will Happen To The Older Workers?, Advice For Laid-Off Engineers], I want to brainstorm about some startup ideas that would be helpful in addressing the pain.

A large number of these engineers need retraining in an engineering domain that is currently in demand.

Many of them are, however, extremely skilled engineers. Perhaps they won’t be designing or verifying chips going forward, but they do have the intellectual horsepower to rapidly learn a new field.
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Corporate Innovation Management: Tyranny of the TAM is Less Severe

I want to call out a specific point that connects the dots between two of my prior articles, From $100k-$1M: Tyranny Of The TAM and Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion.

In my interview with Jim Euchner for the Research-Technology Management journal, I said:

If you think of entrepreneurship outside of a corporation, often business ideas with a total available market of $200 million, $300 million will get ignored. It may not be possible to bootstrap them, but venture capitalists will not fund them. These are ideal for corporate innovation.

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For Music Industry Entrepreneurs – Some Thoughts, Some Questions

I have been observing the online music industry becoming more and more dysfunctional by the day. Pandora, one of the real juggernauts of the space, is up for sale. While wildly popular, the business doesn’t make much money. Unclear, if it ever will.

On the other side of the spectrum, I am close to a few extremely talented musicians who have a hard time finding a business model with which to survive.

Long ago, record labels used to take musicians under their wings, fund recordings, sell albums, make and pay royalties. With the advent of the Internet, that model has gone to hell. Today, record labels do not have a business model to survive, really. The unit economics are dreadful. And the musicians are in a sorry position.
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Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion

Last summer, I was invited to spend half a day with ~40 Fortune 500 Chief Innovation Officers at Xerox PARC, and discuss our experience with corporate innovation methodology through the 1M/1M Incubator In A Box program.

A few months later, Jim Euchner, the CIO of Goodyear, interviewed me for the Research-Technology Management journal. It’s a comprehensive discussion that those of you thinking about corporate innovation may find interesting. For the month of May, the interview is accessible free of charge at the journal’s website.

Please read: Business Acceleration at Scale: An Interview with Sramana Mitra

Some Advice for Laid-Off Engineers

The year 2009 began for many on an anxious note, on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis. Layoffs were everywhere. Foreclosures stalked them from town to town. By the fall, unemployment in America hit 30 million, over 10% of the population. But life goes on. Bills come in, mortgages come due. Looking for a job in this environment is no doubt a daunting, if not impossible, task. Against this backdrop, I profiled several entrepreneurs who managed to turn adversity into opportunity during the dotcom bust.

Kansas farm girl Michelle Munson is one such entrepreneur. Munson bucked her family’s multi-generational agricultural tradition – raising cattle and growing wheat, corn, and soybeans – to study computer science. After a brief stint at IBM, she went to work for two technology startups in a row. Both went under, and Munson was laid off for no fault of her own.
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