Roundtable Recap: April 14 – Strategy Session with Two Validated Startups

During this week’s roundtable, we worked with two entrepreneurs, both of whom have validated their businesses with customers.

EdKonnect

Up second we had Arun Siva from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, pitch EdKonnect, an online tutoring service that is already in revenue.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Featured Videos

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Why do you think the VC was calling you? What did he know about what you were doing?

Manish Jethani: Some local newspaper caught the Facebook post in the group. They saw that we got 1,700 signups in four hours. She wrote a story around that. That got us a bit of media coverage and some kind of popularity. That’s how the fund discovered us.

Sramana Mitra: When you got this call, were you already in operation?

From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do in your first venture?

Francis Dinha: I gave Ericsson three months’ notice. I was going to build something related to switching while doing everything in software. That was my first venture where I made my first million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: Who was the customer?

Video FAQs

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You talked to me about doing a startup in the beauty space. What do you know about the beauty space? You don’t have a particular domain expertise. When you go into a field where you don’t have real domain knowledge, it doesn’t create for the kind of passion that drives a startup to go big. There are exceptions of course. A good formula is you want to go after something that you have a passion for.

Manish Jethani: More than the domain expertise, one thing that has the shortest lifespan is the borrowed conviction. You cannot build something on a borrowed conviction.

571st Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 571st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, April 14, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

571st Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting in 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 571st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, April 14, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 1)

Francis has bootstrapped OpenVPN to $3M ARR with JUST $1M in financing. Wonderful story!

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

Francis Dinha: I was born in northern Iraq in a place called Amadiya. I lived there until I was six years old. Due to the Baghdad-Iraqi war, we had to escape. There was a lot of bombing. I remember the bombing of our village. It reminds me of the current situation in Ukraine. We had to escape to Baghdad.

Best of Bootstrapping: How Can You Play the Low-Probability Game of Start-up Funding Intelligently?

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

Let’s start with a quote from Marc Andreessen:

“At our venture capital firm we only invest in a sort of Silicon Valley–style tech. We see 3,000 inbound deals a year. And those are inbound and coming through our referral network, so those are sort of prequalified. We can do maybe 15 or 20 investments out of the 3,000 a year. So I like to say our day job is crushing entrepreneurs’ hopes and dreams. Our main skill is saying no, and getting people to not hate us.” Source: Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen – Fortune Management

I run One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), a global virtual accelerator for startups. 2022 is our twelfth year supporting entrepreneurs.

Thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs have approached us for help with their funding at a stage where their chances of getting funding is ZERO. We can’t help them, regardless of how powerful our investor connections are. We can’t help a startup get funding before they become fundable. It pains me to see how many entrepreneurs have no idea what makes a startup fundable.

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