Colors: Le Fleuve, Aerial I

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Le Fleuve, Aerial I

Le Fleuve, Aerial I | Sramana Mitra, 2021 | Watercolor, Pastel, Brush Pen | 8  x 8, On Paper

Featured Videos

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heather Hiles, Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity (Part 3)

Heather Hiles: I spoke to the incoming class at Hass business school. I looked at hundreds of folks there and saw a very small minority of black and brown faces and even a smaller minority of folks who are from this country. I said, “How many of you are planning to go into investing?” Most hands went up. I say, “You’re at a deficit because you will be missing whole groups of opportunities of founders with who you have no interaction with and who will be creating the best solutions in the world.”

At Black Ops, we were able to get many LPs from the likes of Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Andreessen Horowitz. The VCs realized that there are communities of founders that they never encountered. I’m talking to 15 founders a week. We see the best and the brightest in our community and we will invest in them.

Thought Leader in Financial Technology: DealMaker CEO Rebecca Kacaba (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think this is a valuable discussion for people trying to understand equity crowdfunding. There need to be guard rails to protect consumers. I have seen what happened in the dot com crash. A lot of people got completely creamed out.

Rebecca Kacaba: Those were public stocks, generally en masse.

Sramana Mitra: Everything. There were public stocks and there were these friends and family investors. This is still happening. It’s not like it’s not happening still. People have dreams of making money off of startups.

Video FAQs

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped with Services to $20M

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

VisiQuate Founder CEO Brian Robertson is a serial bootstrapper. In fact, he always bootstraps using services. Terrific entrepreneur to learn from.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Brian Robertson: I’m from Northern California. We’re not in the heart of Silicon Valley, but up in Sonoma County. I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but I was only there for two weeks. My dad was in the Navy. His family was from the Midwest and we were there for a short period.

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Apple’s Ecosystem Resilient to Economic Conditions

Earlier last week, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced its fourth quarter results. When most tech giants have expressed concerns and reported dismal quarterly results, Apple continues to outpace market expectations – suggesting that its product and services ecosystem is more durable even in the given economic conditions.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heather Hiles, Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity (Part 2)

Heather Hiles: I wound up working with Bill and Melinda Gates at their foundation and did a lot of investing and learning about the investment process. I realized I love capacity building and investing in them. That’s what led, in part, to being a co-founder of Black Ops Ventures where I was Managing Partner. The investment thesis there was that 100% of the money we’re investing is into black-founded tech companies. That’s being run by my partners very well.

Thought Leader in Financial Technology: DealMaker CEO Rebecca Kacaba (Part 4)

Rebecca Kacaba: Equity crowdfunding limits the amount you can invest. It’s in proportion to what your income is. I don’t fundamentally believe that, because you don’t meet an income threshold, you should not have a right to make an investment. The amount that they can invest caps how much they can lose. I think what you’re saying is because doctors make a lot of money, they know how to invest. That’s not necessarily true.

Sramana Mitra: I’m not saying that. That doctor is a customer of the product that Modernizing Medicine is selling. They have a visceral understanding of what that business is because they are the customers.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a SaaS Company with a Paycheck and Scaled

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

I love doing stories of entrepreneurs who are long-time readers of the 1Mby1M blog. Kovai CEO Saravana Kumar is one of them. This is a wonderful story from 2020 of how he scaled a SaaS company from Coimbatore!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

Saravana Kumar: I was born and brought up in India. I was from a city called Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. After finishing my master’s in 2000, I got an opportunity to work in London. I took my exam on a Friday and I got the job on Monday morning in London.

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