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.

241st 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Ann Winblad, Hummer Winblad

Ann Winblad, Co-founder of Hummer Winblad, is one of the most successful women VCs in our industry, and as I mentioned in my introduction, I have never heard her whining about bias against women. One of the most encouraging things she discussed today is how her firm is sourcing interesting ventures from all over the world, not just Silicon Valley. Mulesoft, one of their hot portfolio companies, had its CEO based in Malta, originally!

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Featured Videos

316th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Bryce Roberts, OATV, Indie.vc

Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc, discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives.

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Seed Investors Have Become Risk Averse And Rightfully So!

What Terms Should Entrepreneurs Use for Seed Financing?

The Seed Capital Gap in India

316th Roundtable Recording On August 4, 2016: With Bryce Roberts, OATV and Indie.vc

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

Roundtable Recap: August 4 – Alternatives to Traditional Venture Capital with Bryce Roberts, Indie VC

During this week’s roundtable, our guest was Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc. We discussed the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives.

ADDVentures
First up pitching, Alina Shcherbinina from St. Petersburg, Russia, shared ADDventures, an adventure travel planning service. I gave her extensive feedback on the product direction and business model based on my own travel planning experiences.

Vdrink App
Then Sanket Jain from San Francisco pitched Vdrink App, an app for organizing impromptu happy hours for groups of people focused on Indian cities. The concept needs validation.
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310th Roundtable Recording On June 23, 2016: With T.M. Ravi, The Hive

In case you missed it, you can listen to this roundtable here:

Roundtable Recap: June 23 – The 3-month Acceleration Model for Startups is Bogus

During this week’s roundtable, our guest was T.M. Ravi, Managing Director and Co-founder, The Hive, a venture studio. The discussion touched upon a couple of key issues: the prevalent incubator/accelerator model of 3-month classes, we agreed, is bogus; and the Future of Work: Utopia or Dystopia?

CloudKnots
As for the pitches, first up, Prajit Arakkal from Dubai pitched CloudKnots, which is a concept arbitrage on Task Rabbit and UpWork. I shared my skepticism of why a new platform is necessary. How would it compete with the incumbents?
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287th Roundtable Recording On Dec. 17, 2015: With Engineering Capital Founder Ashmeet Sidana

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

Roundtable Recap: December 17 – Focus on Proteins and Whole Wheat Bread, Skip Candies

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest, Ashmeet Sidana, Founder of Engineering Capital, a seed-stage venture fund focusing on infrastructure technology. Ashmeet had a lot of insights to offer, and delivered one particular piece of wisdom that is close to my heart. He says, funding is like candy. Don’t eat too much candy. Whole wheat bread and proteins are customers and revenues. That’s what you should focus on. Brilliant analogy, don’t you think?

Schedule101
As for the pitches, first up, Martin Kossman from Montreal, Canada, pitched Schedule101, a SaaS solution for restaurants to manage their workforces. Martin has a particular expertise in doing partnerships, which is all very well, but Ashmeet and I agreed that we’d like to see more focus on revenues.
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Is Y Combinator Asking for Too Much Equity for 120k Worth of Funding?

I don’t think it’s a bad deal. $120k is decent seed funding, 7% is reasonable equity for that amount. Their previous deal, I thought, sucked (6-10% equity for $15k-20k). This one is reasonable.

Recently, Sam Altman released some statistics … they’ve funded about 900 companies of which about 7 unicorns have emerged. That part of the story is great.
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Incubators and Accelerators FAQs

This post answers some commonly asked questions about incubators and accelerators. I have answered these questions on Quora as well.

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Why Do I Keep Getting NO From Investors?

If you want funding, you need to start with a business that is fundable.  Ask any serious advisor or investor and you will get an absolute truth: 99% of the ideas as they come are NOT fundable.

From here you have only three choices. One is not so smart. The other two are just fine.

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When Should You Move To Silicon Valley?

The question continues to come up often in our work with global entrepreneurs, so further to my earlier Harvard Business Review piece, I will add more color to it. First, here’s a recap from the HBR piece:

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