Sramana Mitra: I remember some of the work we did on the positioning. Summarize the process of how you’ve got to product-market fit.
>>>The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!
As you start closing in on your decision to join the 1Mby1M global, virtual, non-equity accelerator, here are some ways to dip your toes into the program with progressively higher commitment:
>>>The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!
Sramana Mitra’s 1Mby1M initiative, with its stated goal to “nurture a million entrepreneurs to reach a million dollars each in annual revenue and beyond, thereby creating a trillion dollars in global GDP and ten million jobs,” aims for a significant, measurable impact on the global economy. This ambition, rooted in her “Fortune in the Middle of the Pyramid” (FMOP) theory and emphasis on capital-efficient growth, has distinct implications for global GDP.
>>>The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!
Sramana Mitra’s “Fortune in the Middle of the Pyramid” theory has several significant implications for Development Economics, challenging conventional wisdom and offering a more nuanced approach to fostering economic growth and opportunity, particularly in emerging markets:
>>>Cloud infrastructure provider Cloudflare (NYSE: NET) is in the news this week because of its recent action of allowing users to block AI bots from scraping their websites. AI models rely on access to information to finetune their responses. But Cloudflare is it making it simpler for users to block these bots from learning from their websites for free.
>>>The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!
Sramana Mitra’s “Fortune in the Middle of the Pyramid” theory of Development Economics presents an alternative to the traditional focus on the “bottom of the pyramid” (BoP). While BoP strategies aim to create products and services for the very poorest populations, Mitra’s theory proposes that tech entrepreneurs can build businesses that target the entire spectrum of the economic pyramid, not just the lowest rung.
>>>It took CoRover CEO Ankush Sabharwal and his co-founders two years to launch their first customer, The Indian Railways. During this time, the founders held on to their jobs, diligently fulfilling their responsibilities while also pursuing their dreams. Here is our conversation from 2023.
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?
Ankush Sabharwal: I come from a remote district in India in the extreme north – Rajouri. I was brought up there. My family moved to Jammu. I did schooling there. For Masters, I’ve done Software Engineering.
The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!
The claim by the Startup Genome Project that a significant percentage of startups fail due to “premature scaling,” often driven by overfunding, is a critical insight that challenges the prevailing “growth at all costs” mentality in the venture capital world. While the exact percentage (e.g., 70% or 74%) might vary slightly across their reports and methodologies, the core message is consistent: having too much money too early can be detrimental.
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