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.

383rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Rajeev Madhavan, Clear Ventures

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.

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Featured Videos

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Suri of India Internet Fund (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 Anirudh Suri was recorded in December 2017. 

Anirudh Suri, Founding Partner at India Internet Fund, talks about the funding trends in the Indian startup market.

Sramana Mitra: Help us introduce you to our audience. Tell us about your fund and investment focus. How big is the fund? What size investments do you make?

Anirudh Suri: We are an early stage seed to Series A fund. We invest primarily in technology-based ventures. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eva Ho of Fika 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 Fika Ventures was recorded in December 2017. Eva Ho, General Partner at Fika Ventures, discusses their investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about the focus of the fund. How big is it? What are you focusing on? What size investments are you making?

Eva Ho: We launched Fika Ventures in February 2017. I came from another fund that I co-founded. This is my second fund. It’s a $40 million fund. It’s based in Los Angeles. We make investments in California and also other >>>

223rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Brij Bhasin, Rebright Partners

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.

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Roundtable Recap: January 25 – The Series A Gap is Widening

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Rajeev Madhavan, Founder and General Partner at Clear Ventures. Rajeev 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.

CreepBeep
As for the pitches, Pavan Nandan from Hyderabad, India, pitched CreepBeep, an app for women to develop feedback about an area from a safety standpoint. Pavan wants funding to build the app, which would be impossible to get. I am also not convinced about the monetization potential of the idea.

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Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum On The Startups Investors Invest In

To help entrepreneurs to learn which qualities VCs and seed investors are looking for in the startups they will invest in, we have asked a variety of investors to share their specific perspectives as part of our Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum. Naturally, different investors have different interests. As we teach within our virtual accelerator, an entrepreneurs seeking funding needs to figure out who are the best matches for the type and stage of their business. My interviews with the following investors share a range of options available for different sorts of startups that are looking for funding.

Vinny Lingham, Co-founder and CEO, Civic.com, and Managing Partner of Newtown Partners, discusses his investment thesis in B-to-C seed ventures. We also discuss the role ICOs are playing in filling the gaps in certain seed-stage ventures.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave 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 Yanev Suissa was recorded in October 2017.

Yanev Suissa is General Partner at SineWave Ventures out of Washington DC and Silicon Valley. The firm invests alongside some major firms like Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. Yanev talks about how they invest, and also the trends he sees.

Sramana Mitra: So tell us about SineWave Ventures. What is the focus of your firm? How big is the fund? What size investments do you make? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vinny Lingham of NewTown 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 Vinny Lingham was recorded in November 2017.

Vinny Lingham, Co-founder and CEO, Civic.com, and Managing Partner of Newtown Partners, discusses his investment thesis in B-to-C seed ventures. We also discuss the role ICOs are playing in filling the gaps in certain seed-stage ventures.

Sramana Mitra: So you’ve hadn’t an interesting entrepreneur journey. Tell us about Gyft. >>>

382nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Bruce Cleveland, Wildcat Venture Partners

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.

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226th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Andrew Cain McClary, KdT Ventures

Andrew Cain McClary, Founder and Managing Partner at KdT Ventures, is a physician-turned VC. The focus of his investment is biology and related fields.

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225th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Ira Weiss, Hyde Park Venture Partners

Ira Weiss, General Partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners based in Chicago, talks about venture activity in the MidWest.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta 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 Tod Francis was recorded in September 2014.

Tod Francis, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, starts with a discussion on the history of retail, all the way from shoe stores, to departmental stores, and back to specialty retail. This is followed by a similar overview of the history of e-commerce ranging from Amazon’s strategy to how specialty retail is translating into niche e-commerce, and how Tod is looking at investments in the category.

Sramana Mitra: I think the best question to start out with would be what do you see has happened to the e-commerce business since the 90’s? >>>

382nd Roundtable Recording On January 18, 2018: With Bruce Cleveland, Wildcat Venture Partners

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

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Warren Weiss was recorded in April 2017. 

Warren Weiss, General Partner at Foundation Capital, has a long track record in the Silicon Valley venture capital industry. He shares areas that he and Foundation are excited about as opportunities for building future Unicorns.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your overview and synthesis of what you feel right now about the industry, about ventures, and about how to build these unicorn companies. What have you learned? What have you seen? What are you thinking about opportunities for future unicorns? >>>

3 Investors Reveal an Inside View of the Latin American Startup Scene in Podcasts

Throughout Latin America, the number of online buyers and ecommerce sales are expected to continue to increase significantly over the next few years. While Latin America consists of more than 20 countries, the region is dominated by six key markets – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Stretching from the northern border of Mexico to the southern tip of South America, including the Caribbean, a number of startup hubs have emerged within these key markets. All good news for entrepreneurs.

Several investors focused on the Latin America startup scene shared their perspectives and discussed the trends in the market with me. If you are an entrepreneur with an interest in the region, you will gain an insider’s view by listening to these three 30-minute podcast interviews.

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