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.

391st Roundtable Recording On March 22, 2018: With Ben Mathias, Vertex Ventures

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

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Roundtable Recap: March 22 – Indian Startup Eco-system Needs Exits

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Ben Mathias, Managing Partner at Vertex Ventures, India. The discussion spanned trends and dynamics of the Indian startup eco-system, including exits. India needs exits at this point, even if they’re relatively small exits. We’ve seen some deals happen in the market with Nutanix buying Minjar, and Qualys buying a couple of small ones.

First Responders Live
As for the entrepreneur pitches, James Corbett from Vorhees, NJ, pitched First Responders Live, a video-based communication platform for local police. Very interesting idea.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jason Stoffer of Maveron (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 Jason Stoffer was recorded in September 2014. 

Jason Stoffer, General Partner at Maveron – a consumer-only venture capital firm that has had a successful track record of investing in e-commerce ventures ranging from eBay, Shutterfly, and Groupon to the more recent Zulily, as well as education ventures – discusses e-commerce opportunities.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start off with e-commerce. I know you have invested in other things. We’ll discuss your other investments and your investment thesis in more general terms as well. To begin with, let’s talk about a couple of your e-commerce investments. What is your current thought process around the industry? >>>

4 Investors Discuss Early Stage Startup Investing in Podcasts

In the current early stage investment universe, we have had a lot of change. It used to be simply seed and Series A. Now it’s pre-seed, seed, post-seed, pre-Series A. It’s a very wide spectrum even within early stage investment. To give entrepreneurs the advantage of understanding these changes, I have asked several seed investors to share in specifics how they define early stage and in what part of the continuum they play. Have a listen to these recent 30-minute podcast interviews to learn where your startup might fall within the ever-changing early stage investment world.

Christina Brodbeck, Founding Partner at Rivet Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis of funding companies that target the female demographic in its purchase decision cycle. Very interesting and under-served market.

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390th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Yanai Oron, Vertex Ventures

Yanai Oron, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, took us through his firm’s investment focus on deep technology ventures in Israel. The discussion includes an excellent window into how VC firms have different arithmetic depending on their size and structure.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Oded Hermoni of Rhodium 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 Oded Hermoni was recorded in October 2017. 

Oded Hermoni is Managing Partner at Rhodium Venture Partners, and is also co-founder of an Angel group, J-Angels.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Rhodium. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What sized investments do you make?

Oded Hermoni: Rhodium is not the typical fund. It’s an Israeli-US investment arm of a family office. We have only one LP. We >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Raj Singh of Singh 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 Raj Singh was recorded in September 2016. 

Raj Singh, Founder and Executive Director at Singh Ventures, offers a window into his firm’s investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What size investments do you make?

Raj Singh: I run an early-stage VC fund. We are about $50 million right now. We were founded about two years ago. We focus on mobile technologies. We get involved with anywhere from a concept stage to less than $10,000 a month of recurring revenue. What’s really unique about our fund is what we do in addition to the capital. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With John Dougery of Inventus 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 John Dougery was recorded in May 2016. 

John Dougery, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Inventus Capital, a fund that is one of the earliest players in the Silicon Valley – India corridor, discusses his firm’s investment focus, as well as reviews the trends of the Indian market.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about your firm. You’re a Co-Founder of the firm so you must have founded the firm with a certain thesis. How has it evolved over the years that you’ve been in action in this corridor?

John Dougery: This firm is one of my entrepreneurial efforts along with my co-founders. It all came out of my mutual >>>

390th Roundtable Recording On March 14, 2018: Yanai Oron, Vertex Ventures

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

Roundtable Recap: March 14 – Learn to Bootstrap Effectively to Navigate Early Chicken and Egg Stage

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Yanai Oron, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, who took us through his firm’s investment focus on deep technology ventures in Israel. The discussion includes an excellent window into how VC firms have different arithmetic depending on their size and structure.

Subba-Cultcha.com
As for the entrepreneur pitches, Mark Jennings from London, UK, pitched Subba-Cultcha.com, a Tripadvisor style music review and rating platform spanning live and recorded music. Very interesting idea, that needs to be bootstrapped to fundability, a chicken and egg situation that every entrepreneur has to navigate.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rehan Yar Khan of Orios 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 Rehan Yar Khan was recorded in September 2016. 

Rehan Yar Khan is General Partner at Orios Venture Partners, and an early investor in the Indian startup scene. Rehan’s core focus is on the Indian consumer opportunity, and that is what we focus on in this discussion.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by telling our audience a bit about your fund and your investments in recent years.

Rehan Yar Khan: We are an India-centric venture capital fund. I’ve been an investor for the last 10 years. I set up the fund >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ron Heinz of Signal Peak 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 Ron Heinz was recorded in May 2017. 

Ron Heinz, Founder and Managing Director at Signal Peak Ventures, a venture firm operating mostly in the Rocky Mountain corridor, discusses what’s happening in Utah, as well as Colorado and Arizona. We’ve covered a number of companies from that area including Pluralsight, InsideSales, Steals.com, Ping Identity, and InfusionSoft. Today, there are over a thousand funded startups in those geographies. Bootstrapping runs heavy in the startup culture of the region.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you tell us about Signal Peak Ventures. >>>

6 Investors Discuss their Portfolios via the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum

Entrepreneurs can learn a lot about investors from their process of evaluating the funding-worthiness of startups. Within the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum, I have asked investors to talk a bit about their own investment portfolios. What have you invested in and why? When did the entrepreneur come to you? At what stage and with what metrics? What convinced you to invest? In the following interviews, each investor shares the kinds of businesses in their portfolios and explains why they were drawn to those companies.

Susan Mason, General Partner at Aligned Ventures, talks about the dysfunctions of the broader venture capital model, and what her firm is doing to address those. Excellent conversation.

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389th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Rob Schultz, Serra Ventures

Rob Schultz, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures, discusses catering to startups in under-served geographies. His point of view aligns with what we’ve heard from some other investors.

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211th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Yipeng Zhao, Embark Ventures

Yipeng Zhao, Managing Partner at Embark Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis, as well as broader industry trends and what should and should not be funded.

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