December 18 – 712th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 712th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, December 18, 2025, at 8 a.m. PST / 11 a.m. EST / 5 p.m. CET / 9:30 p.m. India IST.

If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to Pitch and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback from Sramana Mitra, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register to Attend to watch and learn.

You can learn more here and REGISTER TO PITCH OR ATTEND HERE. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be Interested.

>>>

Featured Videos

711th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Investor Gus Tai

Gus Tai is a veteran Venture Capitalist and a close friend. We discuss why the Venture Capital industry needs to shrink in size.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | RSS

France Startup Accelerator Ecosystem: The Major Hubs and Their Strengths

This article is an overview of a series of articles summarizing France Startup Accelerator Ecosystem – major hubs, their incubation and acceleration infrastructure, comparing 1Mby1M to what’s available and educating French founders on how to work with Silicon Valley from day zero. 

France has a geographically diverse startup ecosystem with hubs in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Brittany, each offering distinct advantages and limitations for solo founders and bootstrapped founders. While accelerators provide mentorship, resources, and networking, many entrepreneuers face structural constraints — the essence of the accelerator conundrum.

Video FAQs

711th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable Recording

Why the VC Industry Must Shrink

If you’re trying to understand what’s really happening in the VC industry, Sramana Mitra’s conversation with veteran investor Gus Tai is essential viewing. In this recorded session from the 1Mby1M Roundtable, they each share candid, contrarian insights on why the venture capital industry needs to shrink, what’s driving the current pullback, and how these shifts affect founders, especially solo and bootstrapped entrepreneurs. Their analysis cuts through the noise and offers a clear perspective on where funding is heading and how entrepreneurs can navigate the market more intelligently.

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:

You can register for the next roundtable here.

>>>

Roundtable Recap: December 11 – The Global Venture Capital Industry Needs to Shrink in Size – A Conversation with Gus Tai

During this week’s roundtable, we had Gus Tai, veteran Venture Capitalist and a close friend, in conversation with me on why the Venture Capital industry needs to shrink in size.

We kicked off the conversation with a couple of charts showing the trajectory of the industry over the last decade and analyzed the trends.

Clearly, this is a contrarian perspective. The entire discussion is FULL of contrarian perspectives.

Here are some points we covered:

Sramana Mitra: We’ve had a hyper-active Venture Capital industry since the mid-nineties when the Internet came into being as an engine of innovation. In thirty years, the industry has accumulated enough data to show that the vast majority of VC-funded startups fail. Some fail altogether. Some succeed in building customers, revenues and profits, but are slow growth, and their exit prospects are not in line with the capital raised. So they become zombies. And yet, entrepreneurs still believe Entrepreneurship = Financing. They mindlessly chase venture capital and raise money without a clear idea of how they plan to build a high velocity company. Dumb money abounds. They set hundreds and thousands of entrepreneurs up for failure. How do we change this dynamic?

>>>

How to Validate a Startup Idea Before Writing Any Code

You should not spend 5-7 years of your life on a bogus startup idea. Before you commit invaluable years of your life to an idea, before you write a line of code, you should TEST your idea. How do you do that?

>>>

Germany Startup Accelerator Ecosystem: The Conundrum

This article summarizes Germany Startup Accelerator Ecosystem, looks at the impact of AI layoffs and compares 1Mby1M to the top startup accelerators across key dimensions.

Germany offers a vibrant, multi-hub startup ecosystem, spanning Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Heidelberg/Walldorf. Each hub provides unique advantages—talent pools, corporate clients, investor networks—but all reflect the accelerator conundrum: while founders gain access to mentorship, accelerators, and networks, they often face equity requirements, selective entry, high operational costs, and premature scaling pressures. Even in hubs with strong corporate connections, like Walldorf, founders frequently struggle to bootstrap, validate revenue, and scale sustainably before external pressures force decisions that can compromise long-term business viability.

Startup Accelerators in Berlin, Germany: A Full Overview

This article is an overview of a series of articles summarizing the best startup accelerators in Berlin for bootstrapped and solo founders, comparing them to 1Mby1M.

Guest Author Sareena Bilal | Reviewed by Sramana Mitra

The Accelerator Conundrum series 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.