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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
bootstrapped startups
714th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable Recording
In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: You can register for an upcoming roundtable here.
Roundtable Recap: February 5 – Niche is Good
During this week’s roundtable, I worked with three founders of niche startups from India. The Reader AI App First up, Midhun Thomson from Bengaluru, India, pitched TheReader.AI app. The product is seeing a small number of paying customers. KinderStories Next, we had Ajay Sadhu from Hyderabad, India, pitch KinderStories, a niche app for pre-school teachers.
Why Founders Should Avoid Equity Deals Before Validation
Giving up equity early on is one of the worst decisions an entrepreneur makes. Say, you give up 15% for $200k in pre-seed accelerator funding. What happens next? You haven’t validated anything yet. You don’t know whether your business has the capacity to go from 0 to $100M in 5-7 years. That’s what VCs are
October 30 – 706th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 706th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, October 30, 2025, at 8 a.m. PDT / 11 a.m. EDT / 5 p.m. CEST / 8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to Pitch and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps,
Roundtable Recap: October 23 – AI Investment Thesis with Mohanjit Jolly, Iron Pillar Fund
During this week’s roundtable, we had Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar Fund, discussing his firm’s growth stage investment thesis. You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped a Niche E-commerce Business to $20M
Niche e-commerce still produces compelling success stories. Here is how CEO Brian Lim built iHeartRaves from our conversation in 2018. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Brian Lim: I was raised in LA County. My
