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.

Roundtable Recap: March 1 – One Size Does Not Fit All

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Gary Little, Co-founder at Canvas Ventures. We discussed the various types of venture capital and the evolution of the industry into a rather segmented current eco-system. For an entrepreneur trying to raise money, all this is extremely complicated, but essential to understand, or else, you would be trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.

Passmarked.com
As for the entrepreneur pitch, Mark McChiery from Cape Town, South Africa, pitched Passmarked.com, a web site audit service that tackles security, content, and other important aspects of running a web presence. I found the venture promising and was thrilled to see such a venture emerge from South Africa.

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Featured Videos

6 Investors Discuss Startup Financing via the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum

From listening to VCs and Seed Investors over the past few years, we have learned that the options for startup financing continue to expand. However, it is important to remember that not all ventures can be financed and not all ventures should be financed. To learn if your startup might be of interest to VCs, Angels, or Seed Investors, please read this selection of interviews with a wide-range of investors.

Naren Gupta, Co-founder of Nexus Venture Partners – a firm with an excellent track record of investing in the Silicon Valley – India corridor, but with a global market point of view – shares his insights, nuggets, and interesting wisdom. He is a veteran investor who is also strikingly polite and humble.

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387th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Nate Redmond, Alpha Edison

Nate Redmond, Managing Partner at Alpha Edison, a VC who has put trust-driven ventures at the center of his investment thesis. It’s a very interesting conversation for both entrepreneurs and investors to listen to.

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217th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Rami Elkhatib, Acero Capital

Rami Elkhatib, General Partner at Acero Capital, talks about his investments in companies that require a longer development cycle. As you know, 1Mby1M often uses Bootstrapping with Services as a core methodology to scale companies to fundability. Rami actually loves to invest in such businesses, listen on.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie 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 Stewart Alsop was recorded in May 2016. 

Stewart Alsop, Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, has been a VC for 20 years, and before that, a journalist for another 20 years in the technology industry. This conversation is wide-ranging, spanning autonomous vehicles, unreasonable entrepreneurs, etc.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve been in the business for 20 plus years and you’ve covered technology as a journalist 20 years before that. I’ve been in the business for 20 years. >>>

216th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Rajul Garg, Leo Capital

Rajul Garg, Head of Investments at Leo Capital, discusses the Indian startup eco-system and his fund’s investment focus.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Todd Belfer of Canal 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 Todd Belfer was recorded in October 2017. 

Todd Belfer, Managing Partner of Canal Partners, talks about financing early-stage niche B-to-B SaaS opportunities.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Canal Partners. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What size investments do you make? Where are you based?

Todd Belfer: I started Canal Partners nine years ago because I saw need in the South West to fund early stage software >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Swati Chaturvedi of Propel(x) 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 Swati Chaturvedi was recorded in August 2017. 

Swati Chaturvedi is Co-founder and CEO at Propel(x), an online platform where entrepreneurs are connected to angels. Swati and I discussed some of the key trends of the seed financing eco-system as viewed from Propel(x).

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Propel(x).

Swati Chaturvedi: Propel(x) is an investment marketplace where we connect startups with accredited investors. Our goal is >>>

387th Roundtable Recording on February 22, 2018: With Nate Redmond, Alpha Edison

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

Roundtable Recap: February 22 – Understanding a Trust-Driven Investment Thesis

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Nate Redmond, Managing Partner at Alpha Edison, a VC firm that has put trust-driven ventures at the center of its investment thesis. It’s a very interesting conversation for both entrepreneurs and investors to listen to.

Momni
As for entrepreneur pitches, Karmel Larson from Orem, Utah, pitched Momni, a trust-based mobile app that faciliates the process of moms sharing the responsibility of child care. Excellent presentation and a promising company!

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Naren Gupta of Nexus Venture Partners (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page. The following interview with Naren Gupts was recorded in October 2014. 

Naren Gupta, co-founder of Nexus Venture Partners – a firm with an excellent track record of investing in the Silicon Valley – India corridor, but with a global market point of view – shares his insights, nuggets, and interesting wisdom. He is a veteran investor who is also strikingly polite and humble.

Sramana Mitra: I want to tell you one story before we start the discussion and ask you questions. One of your 

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7 Seed Investor Podcasts Discuss What They Look For In Startups

There is currently a lot of capital in seed investing, with somewhere between 500 and 700 micro VCs extremely active in what we call the pre-Series A ecosystem. Some are really small funds of $10-$15 million dollar funds, some are $30-$50 million dollar funds, some are $70-$100 million dollar funds, and in some cases they do small Series A investing. This is quite a recent phenomena that has emerged over the past few years, perhaps even just within the past 18 months. Huge numbers of people have raised small funds. As a result, a lot of seed deals are getting funded. Recently, over the past month, I’ve spoken with the following group of seed investors about this trend, as well as the types of startups that seed investors are looking for. Have a listen to our conversations, shared below as 30-minute podcast interviews, to learn if seed investors might be interested in financing your startup.

Daniel Cohen, General Partner, Viola Ventures, discusses the Israeli startup market and his firm’s focus within that segment.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Scott Sandell of NEA (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 Scott Sandell was recorded in February 2015.

Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA, is one of NEA’s star investors. He has been named to the Forbes Midas list every year since 2007, and has been involved with eight Unicorn companies including Salesforce.com, Workday, Webex, Tableau, and others. Scott discusses, specifically, Webex and Tableau in quite a bit of depth. In both companies, the scrappy, capital-efficient management of those businesses were striking!

Among Silicon Valley’s venture firms, NEA holds a special place in my own entrepreneurial journey, being the first VC firm that I >>>

386th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Daniel Cohen, Viola Ventures

Daniel Cohen, General Partner, Viola Ventures, discusses the Israeli startup market and his firm’s focus within that segment.

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385th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Nitin Rai, Elevate Capital

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!

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