The Accelerator Conundrum: Navigating Your Path to Startup Success

Alright, let’s cut through the noise and get to the brutal truth of the startup accelerator world. Many entrepreneurs, starry-eyed and naive, leap headfirst into 3-month accelerator programs without truly understanding the long-term implications. It’s time for an incisive commentary, a necessary dissection.

1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Financing

Raising money to build a startup is a huge challenge. To be able to raise any money at all, you must first understand how investors think. We have developed the following courses catering to entrepreneurs in different stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nitin Rai of Elevate Capital (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Nitin Rai of Elevate Capital was recorded in February 2018. 

Nitin Rai, Managing Director at Elevate Capital, made a compelling case for investing in niche businesses with the upfront goal of scoring early exits. Excellent discussion!

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about your seed-stage investment activities. Let’s get to know you and get you introduced into our community.

Nitin Rai: I started out as an entrepreneur back in the 80’s in Silicon Valley. I moved to Oregon in the late 80’s. I started a company >>>

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Corey Schmid of Seven Peaks Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this series. The following interview with Corey Schmid of Seven Peaks Ventures was recorded in February 2018.

Corey Schmid is General Partner at Seven Peak Ventures, a firm with a focus on the Pacific Northwest.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about yourself and Seven Peaks. Let’s get to know the fund. What size is the fund? What’s your investment thesis?

Corey Schmid: I’m a General Partner with Seven Peaks Ventures. We are located in Oregon. We are an early stage venture capital >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Greg Borchardt of Caerus Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Greg Borchardt of Caerus Ventures was recorded in February 2018. 

Greg Borchardt is Co-founder and Managing Partner at Caerus Ventures, a firm that has a focus on connected hardware. It’s an interesting and differentiated investment thesis that is worth listening to, especially for IoT entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Caerus Ventures. What is your sweet spot? What is the size of the fund? What kind of investments do you like to make? What’s the focus? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tim Wilson of Artiman Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Tim Wilson of Artiman Ventures was recorded in February 2018. 

Tim Wilson, Partner at Artiman Ventures, has been in the venture business for a long time, and refreshingly has the skill and the confidence to do very complex technology deals that are relatively early.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Artiman Ventures. Let’s get to know one another. Let’s get you introduced to our audience. What is the fund’s focus? What kind of deals do you like to make? >>>

5 Investor Podcasts Discussing Changes in Startup Financing

The startup financing game has changed. Seed funding used to be the harder round to get. But right now there are 500 to 600 micro-VCs in the market who are funding tons and tons of companies at the seed stage. The numbers are 50,000 to 70,000 seed financing a year, while Series A financing per year is only about 1,500. There is a huge drop off in Series A funding happening. We don’t really have a great answer on how to cross this gap.

Entrepreneurs do need to be able to show certain levels of validation. The Series A investors are looking for a lot of different metrics which are not necessarily being tackled by the ventures who have raised just seed money. It’s become a very tricky environment.

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406th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Devdutt Yellurkar, CRV

Devdutt Yellurkar, General Partner at CRV, who discussed his investment principles. It was an excellent discussion!

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gaurav Jain of Afore Capital (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Gaurav Jain of Afore Capital was recorded in February 2018. 

Gaurav Jain is Managing Partner at Afore Capital, a firm focused on pre-seed investments. This is an excellent conversation for entrepreneurs looking for insights into pre-seed.

Sramana Mitra: With your specific focus, which is pre-seed, we are are very interested in hearing your perspective because, as you know, that part of the ecosystem is very underserved. People want validated 

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193rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Alexander Ross, Illuminate Financial

Alexander Ross, Founder at Illuminate Financial, talks about his firm’s FinTech investment thesis.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Andrew Romans of Rubicon Venture Capital (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Andrew Romans of Rubicon Venture Capital was recorded in January 2018. 

Andrew Romans is General Partner of Rubicon Venture Capital. Our discussion includes an interesting segment on ICOs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get acquainted. What is you investment focus? How big is the fund? What sized investments do you like to make? Let’s start understanding the fund.

Andrew Romans: Rubicon Venture Capital has two main offices in Silicon Valley and New York City. We also have 18 venture >>>

406th Roundtable Recording On July 12, 2018: With Devdutt Yellurkar, CRV

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

Roundtable Recap: July 12 – Laser Sharp Competitive Positioning is Compulsory in Crowded Markets

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Devdutt Yellurkar, General Partner at CRV, who discussed his investment principles. It was an excellent discussion!

Elastic Storage Solutions
As for entrepreneur pitches, we started with Udo Neustadter from Ottawa, Canada, pitching Elastic Storage Solutions, a company addressing the ballooning storage needs of the digital universe. I asked for a thorough competitive positioning exercise, including input from storage buyers on how they’re evaluating solutions.

Velox Networks
Next, Martin Nygate from Singapore pitched Velox Networks, an Asian competitor to RingCentral-like hosted PBX vendors. The company is executing well and is already in revenue.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Madhavan of Clear Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Rajeev Madhavan of Clear Ventures was recorded in January 2018. 

Rajeev Madhavan, Founder and General Partner at Clear Ventures, was first a highly successful serial entrepreneur, and brings to the VC game an entrepreneur’s view of the world. Rajeev highlighted the Series A gap in a big way.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Clear Ventures. How big is it? What is the investing focus? What sized investments are you making? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Brij Bhasin of Rebright Partners (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Brij Bhasin of Rebright Partners was recorded in January 2018. 

Brij Bhasin, Principal and India Investment Lead at Rebright Partners, which is a Japanese Venture Capital firm, discusses their India strategy. The conversation encompasses broader trends in the Indian startup market.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What sized investment do you make? Let’s familiarize our audience with you activities. >>>

404th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Investor Waikit Lau

Waikit Lau, investor and serial entrepreneur, has a refreshingly open attitude towards investing in very early stage companies. Wonderful conversation.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bruce Cleveland of Wildcat Venture Partners (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Bruce Cleveland of Wildcat Venture Partners was recorded in January 2018. 

Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners, is one of the early employees at Oracle, as well as a co-founder of Siebel Systems. He is working on a book on The Traction Gap framework that his firm uses in its venture capital practice.

Sramana Mitra: For those of you who may have been around in the early 2000’s, one of the most successful

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