Thursday, March 31 – 569th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 569th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, March 31, 2022, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/4 p.m. CET/8:30 p.m. India IST.

If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.

You can learn more here and register to pitch or attend here. Register and you will receive the recording by email, even if you are unable to attend. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!

Featured Videos

558th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Deepak Balakrishna, Adya (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I also want to comment on what you said about go-to-market strategy. Cybersecurity is incredibly crowded. If you think about a large enterprise buyer who is usually a CISO, they don’t really have the bandwidth to look up every little startup out there. They have close relationships with the top players. When it comes to small companies, you have to go to market through some other way to reach these buyers. That’s what we assessed.

It’s becoming more acute now. As a result, there has been a shift in the thinking of VCs who are investing in these early-stage cybersecurity companies. They are also thinking about operating with a very small amount of capital. At the point where you need to scale your sales, that’s where investors are seeking exits into strategic players.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Was it mostly direct selling through LinkedIn?

Peter Ord: We were 100% outbound all the way to our Series A. Our Series A was raised in October 2020. We sourced three lists that we believe represent ideal customer profiles. The first list was companies that have recently raised. The second was competitors of our current competitors. The third list was people whose job roles have changed in LinkedIn that had implementation manager in their title. Those three lists are our outbound effort. We got all the way to $2 million ARR just by pure outbound approach.

Video FAQs

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping Using Services to $26M and a Fabulous Exit

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

Founder CEO Vamsi Kora has bootstrapped Gathi Analytics to over $26 million in revenue in four years and exited at a fabulous multiple. Much to learn from his journey.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Vamsi Kora: I’m from south India, from a village in Rajamundry, which is very close to the Bay of Bengal. I did Mechanical Engineering. Right after it, I went to have one of the very few well-paid careers at that time. I couldn’t afford to come to the US. So I went into merchant shipping and roamed around the world for about three years. I made two and half rounds around the equator.

>>>

558th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Deepak Balakrishna, Adya (Part 1)

Deepak Balakrishna, Co-founder CEO of Adya, which was acquired by Qualys. We review his lessons from the trenches, steering a Bootstrapping to Exit transaction.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with at the 1Mby1M premium program with Adya, which was acquired by Qualys. Qualys, as you might know, is a public cyber security company. Adya was also in the cyber security space. I invited Deepak to talk about exit strategy and what he went through.

IPOs 2021: Analysis of SUSE’s NeuVector Acquisition

The global Linux enterprise operating systems, container management and storage, and Edge, is expected to grow at 17% CAGR to reach $24 billion market by 2024. SUSE, a leading provider in this market, went public last year and competes with some big names in the tech industry.

Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the skillset of that employee that you brought in?

Peter Ord: He was a fellow sales leader. I was supporting the product.

Sramana Mitra: The agency that you were working with was maintaining the product.

Peter Ord: Right. We were selling and getting more customers. Todd, who was that first employee, came to me and said, “I don’t have the time to support this. I can’t handle these calls. We need to find an operations person.” That’s when I hired my third employee in December of 2018. He’s won CEO of the Year from Silicon Slopes in Utah.

Catching Up On Readings: Women-Led Unicorns

This feature from Crunchbase News analyzes the trends in unicorns founded by women. So far, 10 of the 100 unicorns in 2022 have a woman co-founder. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.